


Sole Survivor

by Twilight Fang (Asthenos)



Category: Invasion (TV)
Genre: Abuse of Authority, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Physical Abuse, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2017-11-13
Packaged: 2018-08-13 07:07:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 46,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7967200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asthenos/pseuds/Twilight%20Fang
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is an AU fic that starts right at the beginning of the Invasion storyline. Russell is present when Tom is pulled from the water after his plane crash, and every other day after that. Eventually, his curiosity develops into something much deeper.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Day 1**

 

What was the sense of having public holidays if you were still obligated to work on them? Russell Varon, one of many Everglades National Park Rangers summoned to work in the middle of the evening, was left wondering if he would be sufficiently compensated for the inconvenience. He had been in the middle of eating his dinner, which had been left out on the table for him to microwave, when he’d gotten the call. Some sort of emergency down by the cove. Whatever the emergency, couldn’t it have waited until tomorrow?

 

When Russell reached the Glades, he found that a very large area had been cordoned off with yellow tape. He could barely get past the media circus that was milling about the outskirts of the restricted area. There were local news vans, reporters, cameramen, and several busybodies who had probably picked up the news on their CB radios. Well, they were one step ahead of Russell, because he didn’t know what the hell the emergency was in the first place.

 

As Russell drove his pickup truck over to a break in the yellow tape that was being manned by one of his coworkers, he caught sight of an ambulance parked up ahead, right on the edge of the cove. Its sirens were off but the back doors were open. Faster than Russell could blink, a group of medics pushed through the tall grass growing in and around the water, carrying a stretcher hastily back to the ambulance. Russell couldn’t see much for the number of bodies blocking his view. The only thing he could make out was that the person they had pulled out of the water was a male, bundled up in blankets and fitted with an oxygen mask. Before he could get a closer look, one of the medics secured the ambulance doors, knocked on the side of the vehicle, and it was off.

 

“You hear what happened?” Ernie Thompson, the ranger in charge of holding back the press asked Russell as he rolled down his window.

 

“No. What happened?” Russell peered out the windshield, curious about all the unmarked black vans in the area.

 

“Commercial plane went down. Over a hundred passengers were killed instantly on impact.”

 

“Shit,” Russell said softly, now knowing why the air smelled like someone had been barbecuing toxic materials. Suddenly, working late on a holiday didn’t seem like such an inconvenience to him. “But, didn’t they just pull someone out of the water?”

 

“That’s the thing. The plane went down yesterday. They were dredging for bodies for the past twenty-four hours. No survivors. But then they find this guy… intact… trapped inside an air pocket or something. Freaking weird shit.”

 

“Why didn’t I get a call yesterday? I could’ve come in.”

 

“Some government officials were the first on the scene. They wouldn’t let anyone but the rescue workers in here until this afternoon.”

 

That was peculiar. “Why not?”

 

“Not sure. Maybe they were checking to make sure it wasn’t an act of terrorism.”

 

Russell watched the ambulance disappear in his rearview mirror before focusing on the task at hand. “Okay, so what am I here for?”

 

“You’re not going to like it. We’re going to help them clear the wreckage. And let me tell you, there’s a hell of a lot of it!”


	2. Chapter 2

**Day 2**

“Mariel!” Russell hollered into the seemingly vacant house the second he crossed the threshold. “Jesse!” He nearly tripped over the rolled up newspaper that someone had carelessly left on the floor by the entrance as he flicked on the light switch. “Is anyone home?”

 

Why would anyone be home? It was only 10 a.m. on a Saturday. Most families would probably still be in bed around now. Or up and watching TV together. The ideal all-American family wouldn’t waste a perfectly good sunny Saturday morning moping around the house. No. They would already be up and on their way to one of the major theme parks, or maybe a go-kart track for an exciting day of family togetherness. But not Russell’s family. He’d been working for more than fourteen hours straight, hefting around wreckage from that downed airplane fuselage, drenched in sweat and smelling like gasoline and burnt animal hairs. And what did he have to come home to? An empty house, leftover takeout from some fast food joint he’d never heard of, and a stupid newspaper.

 

“I don’t know why I bother to pay for a newspaper subscription when nobody reads the damn thing,” he muttered to himself, tossing his keys onto the kitchen countertop and yanking open the fridge door. He helped himself to the last can of beer and took it over to the kitchen table, along with the leftover takeout container that nobody had remembered to refrigerate. No big deal. His _wife_ was a nurse down at Homestead Memorial Regional Hospital, so if he got food poisoning and needed to be rushed to the emergency room he would probably get preferential treatment.

 

But where was his wife now? And where was his son for that matter?

 

Russell dumped his cell phone onto the tabletop, unrolled the newspaper, and flipped open the lid of the takeout container. Oh great! Fried rice minus all the pork, the fatty ends of black bean beef, and remnants of spring rolls. Basically whatever hadn’t been good enough for Mariel or Jesse to eat. You knew your marriage was doomed when your wife started to feed you the scraps that nobody else wanted to eat.

 

Chewing listlessly on deep fried batter, Russell checked his email messages on his cell phone next. There it was. A short one-liner from Mariel.

 

_8:25 a.m. Took Jesse into town for a new backpack_

What? No, how was your day? How many dead body parts did you accidentally touch or trip over? Are you still alive?

 

Russell doubted Mariel even knew where he’d spent the night, or that she even cared. They fought so much nowadays that the distance might actually be a good thing.

 

Russell cracked open the beer, took a large swig of it to wash down the dry rice, and flattened out the newspaper. The headline immediately caught his attention. _Sole survivor in critical condition._ There was a large snapshot of the plane wreckage and the full square mile that it covered. At the bottom of the article was a small black and white photo of a young man wearing a military uniform. Crisp, clean-cut, and posture as rigid as a plank.

 

“Major Tom Underlay,” Russell read aloud, skimming the article before his gaze drifted back down to the photo. Nothing about Major Tom Underlay really stood out or was worth noting, so Russell folded the page over to read the continuation of the story on the next page. One particularly troubling sentence caught his attention. _Wife dies in crash._ Frowning, Russell turned the paper back over to give Tom’s headshot one final appraisal. “Poor bastard,” he said sympathetically before rolling the newspaper back up, taking aim at the recycle bin in the corner of the kitchen, and launching the paper and Major Tom Underlay’s tragic story into it.


	3. Chapter 3

**Day 4**

Russell toweled off his short, dark hair as he stepped out of the shower. He’d been in there for the better part of the last half hour, trying to rinse the soapy suds off of his body with zero water pressure. The water flow was now down to a trickle, leaving him with no choice but to make the decision to call a plumber. He’d installed the pipes himself and connected the running water to the local water supply. Inviting repairmen into the house that he’d built himself was like a blow to the ego. But he was still working all hours on clearing his beloved glades of airplane parts, so he didn’t have the time to fix the water himself. Besides, he didn’t want to hear Mariel complaining about it when he got home from work later on.

 

Not bothering to shave, because regardless of how often he did it always grew back in within hours, Russell got dressed and left home.

 

Before work, he had to make a stop off at the hospital. He’d been requested to work overtime – again – with absolutely no notice, but it was his turn to pick up Jesse after school. Mariel always turned her cell phone off at work, so there was no way of reaching her to ask if she could pick their son up instead.

 

Mariel was an incredibly gifted nurse who loved her job and her patients. She’d already been promoted twice and was moving up the ladder at a remarkable speed. If they were to have a competition over who worked more overtime, Mariel would most definitely win. Whenever Russell visited her at the hospital, which was seldom nowadays, it was like hunting down an elusive deer in the forest. Just when he thought he was getting close to finding her, she would move off to hide behind another bush or tree. He didn’t think it was intentional, but the game of hide and seek irritated him nonetheless.

 

The hospital staff were familiar with Russell so they let him roam around the hallways unchallenged. Nobody asked if he needed assistance down by the front desk. And no one told him off when he began to pop his head into random rooms with open doors, apologizing once when he caught an elderly woman with her gown open down the back.

 

As Russell turned a corner and trudged down another long, pastel pink hallway, he came upon a section of the hospital that was buzzing with activity. He was in the intensive care unit, where the seriously ill or injured patients were cared for.

 

One room – the large corner room with the two observation windows that was facing the reception area – was surrounded by all sorts of interesting characters. On-duty deputies from the sheriff’s department, a smartly dressed woman who could have been a lawyer, two men wearing matching navy blue jackets and navy blue slacks, and a handful of nurses who were being shadowed by a creepy looking doctor. Russell had run into the aging Dr. Feld on more than one occasion, but had never had reason to speak to him. He wasn’t a doctor known for his bedside manner. All the spectators had one thing in common – they had their full attention on whoever was inside that room. Some of them were being subtle about it, only glancing now and then, but most of them were just staring in rapt fascination. Judging by their expressions, one might think that they were waiting for a new exhibit to open at the zoo.

 

“What’s in room number one?” Russell asked conversationally, not looking at anyone in particular. He didn’t have to wait long before one of the nurses answered in a low whisper.

 

“Tom Underlay.”

 

Homestead was a small town with a low population, so most people knew each other well enough that a name would suffice. It wasn’t necessary to add _that man who survived the plane crash_. Everyone knew who Tom Underlay was and what he represented. He was Homestead’s little miracle, the church’s emissary, and the hospital’s hero? That would explain why everyone was gawking at him.

 

Russell squeezed between two of the nurses to press up against the observation window, looking into the brightly lit room with all its equipment and machinery. He couldn’t really see the patient for all the obstructions blocking his line of sight. Tom was hooked up to a nasal cannula, which was supplying him with supplemental oxygen, an IV drip, and several monitoring devices that left wires trailing out of his hospital gown. From Russell’s vantage point, he could see tremulous movement from Tom’s right arm.

 

“He’s regained consciousness,” Dr. Feld said perfunctorily to one of the nurses. “Go in there and sedate him again.”

 

Sedate him? _Again_? Why the hell would they need to sedate Tom Underlay? He was barely capable of lifting his arm, never mind causing the hospital staff any trouble by pulling wires loose or becoming violent. Russell narrowed his eyes at the doctor’s back, wanting to question this man’s medical expertise. But all he could do was watch as one of the nurses entered the room and flicked on a blindingly intense overhead light.

 

On the bed, Tom reacted to the light, trying to raise his arm defensively against it. What purpose did that light serve except to throw Tom off balance? Weren’t hospitals supposed to make their patients feel comfortable and at ease, not mimic the environment of an interrogation room?

 

Russell could see Tom’s face now, albeit unclearly, as the brunette pleaded with the nurse. He was asking for something, his blue eyes slightly dazed but frightened looking. Who wouldn’t be frightened if they woke up after having survived a plane crash only to find themselves on display like an alien in a dissection tank? Much to Russell’s dismay, instead of answering Tom’s repeated question, the nurse connected a syringe into the IV access device, and injected the sedative without hesitation. Tom reacted nearly instantly, sinking back into the mattress as his eyelids fluttered shut against his will.

 

Russell pushed away from the observation window feeling like a dirty pervert for having witnessed such a cruel act. The two men in the navy blue jackets were studying Tom’s unconscious form with mild detachment, while some of the nurses were giggling. Tom wasn’t being treated like a patient, he was being tormented like a potentially dangerous animal.

 

As Russell dragged himself away from the intensive care unit, he heard the doctor ask the nurse about what words had been exchanged inside the room.

 

“He was asking for his wife again, but I didn’t answer him,” the nurse replied unemotionally.

 

“That’s all he said?”

 

“I asked him where he was. He knew he was in Homestead, but he didn’t know the date.”

 

“That’s to be expected considering how he was unconscious during the first three days, although we still haven’t been able to determine if he was conscious at any point in time between the crash and his rescue.”

 

Unconscious for three days and sedated throughout the fourth. Russell couldn’t help but feel sorry for Tom Underlay and disgusted at the hospital staff for treating him like a prisoner.


	4. Chapter 4

**Day 6**

Russell had spent most of Tuesday decontaminating the same section of the Glades that he had been working on since Friday. Removing foreign debris and taking water and soil samples. For some odd reason, the military refused to lift the quarantine on the park itself, despite the fact that the crash site was still cordoned off and limited to that one mile radius. All the missing passengers had been found, or what remained of them, and their bodies were being released to their next of kin following an autopsy.

 

So why was Russell back at the hospital after a twelve-hour shift, having skipped dinner in order to get there before visiting hours were over?

 

Russell had been on his way home when he’d tuned into the local news station on his radio, listening to the announcement on Tom Underlay. Apparently, as of a few hours ago, Tom had been upgraded to stable condition and was now in a private room where he could receive visitors. Even though Russell knew that visiting a total stranger in the hospital was a bizarre way to make a new friend, he felt compelled to see how Tom was doing. He still hadn’t been able to shake his concern over the way Tom had been treated the other day, so maybe this was his way of alleviating his own guilt over not having reported what he’d perceived as misconduct.

 

As Russell entered the hospital through the main entrance, trying to be subtle as he passed by the front desk, he ran into one of Mariel’s coworkers.

 

“Russell!” Jody exclaimed, looking surprised to see him. “Mariel left over an hour ago.”

 

“Yeah… I know.”

 

“Oh…you’re here to visit someone?” Even if that hadn’t been Jody’s logical conclusion, the small plant that Russell was carrying in his hands was evidence enough.

 

“Yeah, could you tell me what room Tom Underlay is in?”

 

Jody raised an eyebrow at that but answered without bothering to check. “He’s in the private wing, last room on the left. But you’ll need to sign in.”

 

Russell sheepishly accepted the clipboard from Jody and filled in his information.

 

**Visitor: Russell Varon**

**Patient: Tom Underlay**

**Time In: 5:45**

Russell felt awfully foolish as he made his way to the room that Jody had indicated. He didn’t know what to expect. What was Tom Underlay like? How would he react to receiving a visitor whom he’d never met before? Would he even be conscious?

 

As soon as he reached the room, he knew that something was still not right. This room was closed off completely with glass windows and glass doors. There was no privacy whatsoever. It looked like Tom was still being treated like a lab specimen while being segregated from the rest of the patients, implying that he might be a threat or be carrying a lethal disease. That was just nonsense, because there were no lethal diseases in the glades that Tom could have been exposed to.

 

Russell looked inside to see that Tom was lying on his side with his back facing the door. Taking a deep breath to quell his nervousness, Russell lightly rapped on the door and entered.

 

“Hi, Mr. Underlay,” he called out cautiously as he approached the bed.

 

Tom stirred, slowly turning over so that he could face Russell. In that moment, Russell knew that he had made a terrible mistake. Tom was not some tough looking army type with a crew cut and chiseled features, like he had imagined. He was slender with high cheekbones, piercing big blue eyes, and light brown wavy hair. Although he looked deathly pale and weak, he was still real easy on the eyes. But for Russell, he was absolutely gorgeous. And it didn’t matter that Tom was dressed in the most unflattering hospital gown, or that he still looked like he was on death row, hooked up to various machines that were monitoring his vital signs. At least he no longer required the supplemental oxygen and appeared to be lucid.

 

How could he be thinking of how attractive Tom was at a time like this? Russell forced himself to remain as detached as possible, reminding himself that he was just there to visit and show moral support. After all, Tom had just lost his wife, for crying out loud! Russell was above hitting on a recently widowed man in the hospital. Or at least he would like to think that he was.

 

“Hello…?” Tom gazed up at Russell in confusion, having difficulty focusing. His voice was soft and scratchy, perhaps evidence of neglect. There was a water pitcher and glass on a table at the far end of the bed, but if Tom was still immobile he wouldn’t be getting it by himself anytime soon.

 

“I’m Russell. Russell Varon.” He tried to muster up the courage to put the plant down and get it out of the way, but he just stood there like an idiot, not knowing what he should do next.

 

“Russell…,” Tom repeated curiously. “You’re one of the park rangers. Were you the one who pulled me out of the water?” He smiled warmly up at Russell – a beautiful smile full of hope and positivity.

 

Russell hadn’t had any time to change before coming over, so it was no wonder that Tom had been able to identify him by his ranger jacket and badge. “Um… no. I wasn’t brought in until after you were pulled from the water. But I was there.” That sure explained a lot! If he hadn’t been one of the men who had rescued Tom, and if he wasn’t a friend or family member, he really had no right being there. Needing something to cover up his awkwardness, Russell quickly set the plant down on the bedside table. When Tom pushed himself up on the pillows to try to see the plant, Russell hurried over to help him. He propped up the pillows and was about to back off when Tom grabbed his forearm to use as leverage so that he could sit up properly. Tom’s grip was weak and his fingers cool, and after he managed to settle himself against the pillows he was out of breath. Without thinking, Russell retrieved the glass at the end of the bed, filled it with water, and held it out to Tom.

 

“Thank you,” Tom gasped, sipping gratefully at the water that he hadn’t been able to get to by himself.

 

“There’s a call button here, if you need anything,” Russell said kindly, lifting the device up so that Tom could see it.

 

Tom’s expression suddenly darkened, became frightened and suspicious. “Please don’t press that.”

 

“Why not?” But even as the words left Russell’s lips he knew the reason why not.

 

“They keep sedating me for some reason. And when I wake up… I feel really nauseated and dizzy.” Tom had obviously learnt his lesson. The call button now equaled sedation in his mind.

 

Russell dropped the device back onto the bed and tried to keep the anger out of his eyes. He would definitely need to bring this issue up with Mariel later on. There would be hell to pay if the physician in charge – who else could it be but Dr. Feld? - was acting inappropriately with his wild misuse of that sedative.

 

“Mr. Underlay…”

 

“Tom,” the brunette corrected him.

 

“Tom,” Russell began again, liking the way the name sounded. It was a simple name for what appeared to be a highly complex man. “I’m really sorry about your loss…” As he trailed off, he suddenly panicked. Had Tom been told about the death of his wife? What if he hadn’t?! Russell didn’t want to be the one to have to explain to Tom that he was now alone and without a life partner. Or to bring up the obligation that Tom now had of having to handle his wife’s upsetting funeral arrangements.

 

But the flicker of raw emotion that passed through Tom’s eyes and the way he bowed his head, accepting Russell’s condolences but not saying a word to them, was a clear indication that he was aware of his mournful predicament.

 

“Can I get you anything? Something to eat? Maybe a sandwich from the cafeteria?” Anything to change the subject and get out of the dreadful mire that the atmosphere had been sucked into.

 

“Thanks for offering, but I’m not allowed to eat anything just yet.”

 

“The doctor told you that?” That was one way to keep the patient docile and cooperative. By keeping Tom sedated and having him reliant on the IV drip for his sustenance, Dr. Feld was effectively neutralizing whatever threat he thought his patient posed.

 

Tom shrugged, or at least attempted to, before returning his attention to the plant. “Is this for me?”

 

“Yeah. I hope that’s not strange or anything.” Because there weren’t any other flowers anywhere in the room. No get well soon cards. No balloons. No evidence that anyone cared about Tom Underlay’s existence, never mind his miraculous survival. “It’s a wild petunia,” he explained as Tom gazed at the small plant that had one tiny violet flower hanging over the edge of the glass container he’d planted it in. “We have a lot of them in the Glades.”

 

“That was very thoughtful of you, Russell. Thank you.”

 

Before Tom could notice the color in his cheeks, Russell straightened up and began to eye the door. Visiting hours were almost up and he would rather surreptitiously leave the building than have one of the nurses come in to remind him of the time. “Well, I just thought that I’d come by… because…” Why the hell had he decided to come by? Maybe he should have thought up a proper excuse before he’d laid eyes on Tom Underlay because just being in that man’s presence made it hard to think.

 

“I’m sure you had your reasons,” Tom offered, his tone sounding a bit mysterious. “Everything happens for a reason… doesn’t it?” When he looked to Russell for confirmation, all Russell could do was nod.

 

“Uh… see you tomorrow then,” Russell blurted out as he headed for the exit.

 

“You’re going to come tomorrow, too?”

 

Had he really said that? Well that didn’t sound _too_ presumptuous. Perhaps he hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but he knew that he absolutely needed to see Tom again. “If that’s okay with you?” He glanced back to check Tom’s reaction and was completely shocked to see that the brunette was blushing. Actually, genuinely, blushing. Although Tom didn’t meet his gaze or answer, Russell knew that he was more than welcome to come for another visit. “Take care, Tom,” he called out, feeling like a cocky school kid who had just scored a date with the hottest girl in class. Or boy. Whatever.


	5. Chapter 5

**Day 7**

Russell was up early and parked outside the hospital a couple of minutes before visiting hours started. He was working the late shift today and wouldn’t need to report to work until the afternoon. So he had dressed casually in a pair of faded blue jeans and a beige t-shirt. Because it was warm outside. And he tended to lack an imagination when it came to his wardrobe choices, keeping his clothes practical and outdoor friendly. Not because he wanted to show off his muscular arms and chest to Tom Underlay. Or maybe he did want to, just a little. Judging by the vibes he’d been getting from Tom yesterday, the brunette was definitely into him. This was just giving him some incentive to stay interested.

 

After he’d gotten back from the hospital last night, he’d actively engaged Mariel in a conversation. The conversation that she’d been wanting to have for the past few months, but every time it had come up Russell had blown her off. Last night he had let her complain and then cry about how unhappy she was in their relationship. She had even revealed the startling fact that she had fulfilled all the requirements necessary for becoming a doctor, having received her doctor of medicine degree a month ago – further proof that Russell was either a lousy husband or they were completely out-of-sync and incompatible – and was apprenticing under Dr. Feld. So his wife was now _Dr._ Varon and everyone but her own husband had congratulated her on that amazing achievement. Talk about feeling like an oblivious asshole.

 

Mariel had gone on to tell Russell that she didn’t hate him. No, she just didn’t love him anymore and she wanted out. During her previous attempts at bringing up the topic of divorce, Russell had shut her down and suggested marriage counseling with Father Scanlon at the church. Because it was absolutely scandalous for a couple from a small town like Homestead to petition for a divorce. Then he’d told her to think about their son Jesse and how splitting up would affect him. But last night instead of guilt tripping her, he had surprised himself by admitting that he was unhappy too, and yes, a divorce would be in the best interest of both parties.  

 

At the end of their conversation, Mariel had looked relieved and the rest of the night they had spent together watching TV with Jesse and playing board games. It was like a crushing weight had been lifted from their shoulders and they were now free to go about their lives as they each – individually – saw fit. Wrapped up in the discussion of how they would go about getting a divorce was the agreement that they were now free to see other people. And Russell hoped that the ‘other people’ could possibly include Tom Underlay.

 

Checking his black sports watch again, Russell saw that visiting hours would start in two minutes. Picking up the paper bag that was sitting on the passenger’s side seat, he got out of his jeep and strolled up to the hospital in high spirits.

  

When Russell neared Tom’s room, he noticed that the door was ajar and a nurse was waiting outside. As he got closer, he spotted the least compassionate doctor in the entire hospital – Dr. Feld – inside Tom’s room. The morbid looking doctor was leaning over Tom with a rubber tourniquet and a syringe in one hand and dangling a set of restraints threateningly with the other. Tom had retreated as far back against the opposite bedrail as he could get, keeping both arms out of reach of the sinister looking doctor. _What the hell?_ Russell strode into the room and immediately felt a set of intense blue eyes lock onto him.

 

“Russell!” Tom anxiously called out in greeting, though it was probably more for Dr. Feld’s benefit than for Russell’s.

 

“What’s going on here?” Russell addressed the doctor, hoping that the man had a good explanation for those restraints.

 

Dr. Feld whirled around to glare at Russell, his small beady eyes magnified behind his thick, old fashioned spectacles. “I’m currently with this patient, so you are going to have to come back later.”

 

Russell brushed past Dr. Feld to sit in the chair by Tom’s bed, making himself look as formidable as he possibly could by crossing his arms over his chest and glaring back. “So I’ll wait,” he said rudely, accustomed to dealing with jerks like Dr. Feld all the time. Uncaring cretins like Dr. Feld who trampled on the local fauna inside the glades and had the audacity to try to take home wild opossums as pets. The one thing they had in common was that their own selfish desires took precedence over the comfort or wellbeing of the weak creatures that they preyed on. “Unless there’s a problem here that I should know about…?”

 

Without hesitation, Tom pointed out a very serious problem. “He wants another blood sample. He already took one today – an hour ago - four yesterday, and four the day before that.” Tom looked up at Russell imploringly, appearing dreadfully pale. “If he takes one more blood sample, I’m going to pass out or throw up.” Usually patients might say that as an exaggeration, but Tom sounded entirely sincere.

 

 _Four_ blood samples in a day?! Russell was beginning to think that Dr. Feld was begging to have his medical license revoked.

 

“Now, you listen here, Mr. Underlay, these blood samples are necessary in order to give you an accurate prognosis. It is not up to you to decide how many you are able to tolerate in a day.”

 

“Hold on a minute, is he getting adequate fluid replacement for you to be taking so much blood? I noticed that nobody is ensuring he remains hydrated and he’s not being given regular meals.” And the IV had been taken out, which made the situation even more disturbing. Russell stood up again when Dr. Feld clenched the restraints in his hand, protectively taking up a defensive stance in front of Tom. Those restraints were going on over his dead body. “Even if he was being properly cared for, which I’m having trouble believing right now, four blood samples is really excessive.”

 

“Excuse me, who are you?” Dr. Feld asked in as condescending a tone as possible.

 

“A concerned citizen who is familiar with hospital procedures,” Russell replied with just as much condescension. Because he didn’t want to come out and admit that he wasn’t family, and he worried that identifying himself might cause trouble for Mariel. “I’m going to pretend that I didn’t see you threaten a non-aggressive patient with a set of restraints and let you walk out of here. But if you try that again, I guarantee you that Mr. Underlay here will sue you for medical malpractice. And, in case you’ve forgotten hospital policies, it’s the patient’s right to refuse blood tests and any and all drug treatments. So you might want to lay off the sedation while you’re at it.” Russell could feel the hatred in Dr. Feld’s stare as the doctor muttered something under his breath before storming out of the room. He returned the doctor’s animosity with just as much loathing, relieved to have finally gotten that out of his system. “Are you okay?” He asked Tom as he sat on the edge of the bed.

 

“I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a more impressive display of male testosterone,” Tom shakily complimented Russell, slowly stretching out his cramped body from where he was pressed against the bedrail at his back. “I also wasn’t aware that he was obligated to respect my wishes. Thanks, Russ.”

 

Russell vaguely acknowledged that Tom had taken the liberty of giving him a nickname before he read between the lines of what the brunette had just said. “You mean you refused the blood sample before and he forced it on you anyway?”

 

“That and the sedation… and the biopsy.” Tom unhappily leaned back against the pillows and closed his eyes.

 

“What biopsy?! Why the hell would they need to take a biopsy?” When Tom lay there unresponsive, showing signs of stress and exhaustion, Russell got a good look at the purplish bruising all along Tom’s forearms - both of them. Some of the needle marks were from drawing blood, others looked like they were from intravenous injections. But with what? And why? They looked horribly sore and administered either by an amateur or in haste. “Tom, what location did they take the biopsy from?”

 

“My abdomen. I’m not sure which hurt worse, the actual biopsy or the anesthetic,” Tom replied, sounding ragged and defeated.

 

Russell watched those drained blue eyes gaze up at him again and felt his chest tighten. “If anyone tries to perform anymore unnecessary procedures on you, you call me and I’ll deal with them.” He pulled out his wallet from the back pocket of his jeans and withdrew his business card. His home phone number and cell phone number were included as emergency contact numbers so Tom could reach him at any hour.

 

Tom reached for the card but ended up grasping Russell’s fingers instead when his trembling hand missed its target. “Sorry,” he said in embarrassment, about to withdraw his hand because he just couldn’t keep it steady.

 

But Russell caught Tom’s hand in order to give him the card, closing his fingers over the slender ones in his grasp. “It’s okay,” he said reassuringly. He held on much longer than was necessary, leaning into Tom’s personal space, not minding that the uncoordinated patient smelled like antiseptic and the generic soap that the hospital used to wash its laundry with. There was just something about Tom that was so magnetic, reeling him in like an electron latching onto a proton.

 

“Maybe not now, but it will be,” Tom said quietly, as if he had set out a riddle for Russell to solve.

 

When Russell released Tom’s hand, he found that he was the subject of a very thorough visual examination. While he had been following the lines of Tom’s hospital gown out of the corner of his eye, appreciating whatever was inadvertently exposed to him, Tom had been unabashedly admiring the expanse of his chest and his bare arms. There was no other way to describe the way Tom was looking at him because it certainly wasn’t a superficial glance. But as soon as Tom realized Russell was watching him, he averted his eyes almost shyly.

 

“Hey, do you want to go outside for a while? You could use some fresh air,” Russell suggested. And maybe if they went outside they wouldn’t have those two idiots from the transportation department – if that’s where they were really from - gaping in the room every five minutes.

 

“Am I allowed to go outside?” Tom asked sarcastically.

 

“So long as you’re in no danger of falling or catching a cold. Hold on, I’ll get you a blanket and a wheelchair.”

 

“Russ, I don’t want to be seen outside in a wheelchair,” Tom complained.

 

“Look, the only way the hospital will let you outside without the wheelchair is if you’re capable of walking unassisted. Otherwise they can be held liable for any injuries you may sustain while on the premises. I seriously doubt you could make it to the door, never mind the courtyard,” Russell inferred knowingly.

 

“Fine, go get the wheelchair,” Tom relented with a sigh. “Anything to get out of this room and away from Dr. Feld.”

 

It didn’t take long for Russell to borrow a wheelchair from the nurse’s station and a small blanket that was permissible to take outside. He pushed the wheelchair up to the bed and lowered the bedrail, then hesitated. If Tom couldn’t get into the wheelchair by himself, he would have to help him into it. Helping him meant touching him, and Russell wasn’t so sure if that was a good idea because his intentions weren’t entirely pure. When the silence in the room became unbearable, Russell glanced over to see Tom looking miserable and frustrated.

 

“Maybe you should come back tomorrow,” Tom said, his voice filled with dejection. “I can barely move…”

 

Of course he couldn’t move. He’d been in a plane crash, drugged out of his mind, and deprived of his basic rights. And here Russell was worrying that he might have a reaction if he got too close to him. Sometimes he could be such a jerk. “Is it okay if I help you?” He asked, just to make sure.

 

“I don’t want to trouble you…” But, Tom looked like he would do anything to be able to go outside. Even rely on the kindness of a total stranger.

 

“It’s no trouble at all.” Russell leaned over the bed and Tom reached out to take hold of his arm. But Russell had no intention of letting Tom tire himself out by trying to get over to that wheelchair. Ignoring Tom’s outstretched arm, he reached over, slid his arms under Tom and lifted. The sudden tilt caused Tom to instinctively grab onto Russell’s shoulders when the room spun, bringing them awfully close together. “There you go,” Russell said triumphantly as he lowered Tom into the wheelchair, pretending that their proximity wasn’t driving him nuts.

 

“Thanks,” Tom said in an awestruck tone. “Either I’ve lost weight or you must be really strong.”

 

“You could do with putting on a few pounds, but I’m used to doing a lot of lifting,” Russell confessed, trying to sound modest about it. “You have to be strong to take on a job with the park.” Okay, not so modest.

 

“I suppose you must move around a lot of soil and fertilizer,” Tom surmised, predictably not knowing much about the range of duties a park ranger was responsible for, like most of the rest of the population.  

 

Trying to keep a straight face, Russell got behind the wheelchair and steered it for the open door. “Well, that’s a given, but those 40 pound sacks don’t weigh anywhere near what an alligator does.”

 

There was an astonished length of silence before Tom spoke again. “How much does an alligator weigh and why would you need to lift it?”

 

“At least four times as much as you do, and sometimes we need to relocate them, or tranquilize and tag them. But the alligators and crocodiles aren’t as lethal as the pythons. There’s been at least one incident of a python swallowing a croc whole! It didn’t go over so well with the python’s digestive tract though…”

 

“Uh… that’s extremely fascinating information, Russ, but I think that I can’t handle anymore details about wild animals digesting each other on an empty stomach.”

 

“Sorry about that,” Russell said apologetically, relieved that Tom couldn’t see him smirking.

 

* * *

 

It was pleasantly sunny with a bit of a breeze out in the courtyard, and there weren’t any other patients outside so early in the morning, so Tom had all the open space to himself.

 

Russell found a cozy looking spot over by a strip of bright yellow daffodils, with a fragrant rose bush off to one side of a wooden bench that had seen better days. He lined the wheelchair up with the bench and opened up the blanket, trying to shake out the sick patient smell before he covered Tom up with it. Tom didn’t acknowledge the blanket because he was too preoccupied with his surroundings. Perhaps it was due to the fact that he hadn’t been outside in natural light for days, but he seemed to be honing in four of his five senses on what he could absorb from his environment. Although he had to squint because his eyes were unaccustomed to the sunlight, he slowly surveyed every object within his visual range. From the way the daffodils bent and swayed in the gentle wind, to the individual blades of grass near Russell’s sneakers. And even as Tom’s eyes were drinking in colors and shapes, his ears were intently listening, his lips parting slightly in wonder when a mourning dove began to make a long, drawn-out cooing sound.

 

Russell sat down slowly on the bench beside Tom, enthralled by his companion’s mystifying behavior. He watched Tom languidly inhale the air, smiling as he detected the sweet perfume of the rose bush that was beyond his field of vision. And then those slender fingers were grasping the arm of the bench, running along the worn and rotting wood, as if tracing the veins of the tree it had been cut from. For Russell, Tom himself was an attractive enigma, free from the confines of his hospital bed, and made even more beautiful by the gentle rays the sun cast on his face. Although lying in bed all day had flattened Tom’s hair, making it appear simply brown, it was actually much brighter and blonder out in the light. His skin also looked a lot healthier, and his eyes a more vivid blue, framed by long eyelashes so fair that they looked translucent.

 

“Everything is so beautiful,” Tom murmured, as if he had been transferred to a Utopia that only he could appreciate.

 

“Yeah… it sure is,” Russell softly agreed, not taking his eyes off of Tom for a second. It took a trying amount of restraint for him not to take hold of Tom’s hand to still his bizarre tactile appreciation of the grain in the wood.

 

“Were the colors always this extraordinary?”

 

That question had been spoken in such a low whisper that Russell had to strain to hear it. It hadn’t been phrased to him, but he found himself curiously responding to it anyhow. “What do you mean? The colors of what?”

 

“Everything.”

 

Tom’s gaze gradually lifted from the pebble-lined path that he’d been focusing on to Russell’s face, studying the park ranger just as overzealously as he had the petals of the tulips. Russell felt his fingers twitch under that enthusiastic gaze, not realizing what he had done until he felt the cool fingers in his grasp. This was definitely not one of his finest moments. He felt like he had crossed a barrier somehow, endangering the trust that he’d been building with Tom. What total moron went around touching hospital patients that they had only met the day before? And to top it all off, Tom was a patient who was still in mourning. But, as Russell watched Tom’s cheeks become slightly flushed and his eyes flit nervously to the opposite end of the courtyard – probably checking to see if they were being observed – he realized that he only had two options. Either keep his hand where it was, making his intentions perfectly clear, or pull it away, which would leave Tom feeling confused and possibly rejected. Well, Russell had a habit of screwing things up but not of cowardly behavior, so he kept his hand where it was.

 

Amazingly, Tom did not try to pull his hand away, and after a few minutes, Russell’s heartbeat froze when those intense blue eyes gazed into his light brown ones. “I didn’t think that you’d visited me yesterday by some random coincidence,” Tom said softly before looking away and appearing bashful. “But I didn’t expect this…”

 

What was Russell going to do with this beautiful man and all his contradicting idiosyncrasies? Although highly introspective and quiet, the way Tom spoke and the words he chose seemed to hint at some higher meaning. While he had no trouble pointing out that he had already caught onto Russell’s ulterior motives in visiting, he did so with a shyness that might have indicated reticence. And the way Tom practically devoured any incoming stimuli was enough to bewilder any psychologist. Russell also had no way of knowing if this was the way Tom usually acted, or if he had been profoundly affected by his life-altering close encounter with death.

 

“Knowing what to expect makes life kind of boring, doesn’t it?” Russell challenged, turning over his hand, palm up, and giving Tom a suggestive look. The only way to be certain if Tom understood what was being offered was to force him to be the one to accept it.

 

“Life could never be boring,” Tom countered, tentatively placing his hand into Russell’s open one. When Russell entwined their fingers together, Tom smiled and followed the slow progress of a cluster of fluffy, white clouds as they parted in the sky. “Not with you in it, Russell,” he added as an afterthought.

 

That had been a loaded comment if Russell had ever heard one. “Something tells me that you yourself have one hell of a lot to offer, Tom,” Russell mused, enjoying the view, which didn’t include anything other than Tom in it. He felt the fingers in his grasp begin to warm up, indicating that Tom’s body temperature was most likely lower than normal due to a lack of circulation and an energy deficiency. It might not have bothered him so much if he hadn’t been aware of the suspicious way that Tom was being treated at the hospital. Before his mind could begin to speculate on the possible reasons for Dr. Feld’s obsession with Tom, he remembered his purpose in visiting today. “I brought you something.” He squeezed Tom’s hand and reluctantly let go so that he could open the paper bag that he’d set down beside him. “You look well enough to stomach some pudding and juice,” he said as he produced the items that he’d picked up from a nearby café on his way over. “Unless you’re allergic to milk… or eggs…?”

 

“I’m not, but that wouldn’t stop me even if I were.”

 

“Here, let me get it open for you.” Russell ripped the seal off of the pudding and jabbed a plastic spoon into it before offering it to Tom who eagerly accepted the first real food he’d seen in over a week. As Tom dug into the pudding, savoring it spoonful by spoonful, Russell found himself distracted by movement out of the corner of his eye. When he turned to look over his shoulder, he was irritated to find those same two men from the transportation department smoking near a bed of lilacs a few feet away. His irritation quickly transformed into apprehension and then anger when he realized that both men were fixated on Tom, observing him as if they were cataloguing the way a specimen might act when introduced into a new environment.


	6. Chapter 6

**Day 8: Morning**

For the first time since Tom had arrived at Homestead Memorial Regional Hospital, he woke up without feeling dizzy or nauseated, and free from the harassment of Dr. Feld. He’d been having nothing but drug-induced nightmares for the past few days, so it was a major relief to be able to slip from a meaningless jumble of harmless, dreamlike images into the comforting drone of reality.

 

It was still relatively early, so nurses padding up and down the halls in their sneakers, or a senior citizen calling out for assistance, was the extent of the activity that Tom could hear.

 

Tom rolled onto his side and pushed himself up onto one arm, experimentally seeing how much energy and strength he had to work with. Not much more than yesterday, but he felt a lot less disoriented, which was definitely a step in the right direction. As he shoved one of the pillows out of the way, it made a light rustling sound. Like it had brushed up against plastic. That was odd. Reaching underneath it, he felt a peculiar bulge inside the bottom of the pillow case. He rummaged around with his hand, discovering something in a plastic wrapper, a rectangular object, and a crumpled up piece of paper hidden inside the pillow case. Cautiously eyeing the deserted hallway outside his room, he pulled out an energy bar, a small juice box, and a hastily written note.

 

_Tom,_

_I didn’t want to wake you up,_

_and I don’t know if that asshole is_

_still trying to starve you,_

_so I brought you breakfast._

_Don’t let them find the wrapper_

_or the empty container._

_Put both under the mattress_

_I’ll get them later._

_Russell_

Tom felt warm inside as he reread the note before stuffing it under the mattress. He ripped open the energy bar and ate it ravenously, forcing himself to chew it properly so that it wouldn’t upset his stomach. As the welcoming earthy flavor of granola ignited his sense of taste, he reached over to stroke his fingertip over the tiny petals of the wild petunia that Russell had given him. The soil and petals were damp, having obviously been watered by the park ranger on his way out.

 

What had Tom done to deserve meeting such a wonderfully caring and gentle man? Not only was Russell a bit of a romantic, but he also went out of his way to make sure that Tom would be taken care of in his absence. How early had Russell gotten up to be able to make the time to stop by the hospital before his long shift at the Glades? How many people were capable of such generosity and kindness? Even though they had just met, Tom couldn’t shake off the eerie feeling of familiarity when around Russell. The absolute certainty that they were meant to be together. It wasn’t so much a premonition as it was a gut feeling, like two pieces of a puzzle had just clicked into place on their own, making something that had once been broken whole again.

 

After Tom thirstily emptied the juice box, he crushed it and pushed it as far under the mattress as he could, on the far end of the bed. Feeling a lot better with something in his stomach, he swung his legs over the side of the bed, steeled himself with a few deep breaths, and pushed onto his feet. Of course being bedridden for so many days hadn’t done his muscles or balance any favors, causing him to collapse weakly to the floor as his legs gave out on him. Still, he refused to touch that accursed call button or return to the bed. He would not give Dr. Feld an excuse to sedate him again.

 

For a few minutes, Tom sat huddled on the floor, drawing his legs close to his body and aggressively massaging them. Gradually, the numbness eased up enough for him to try again, grabbing onto the bed frame and pulling himself up off of the floor. His legs felt like rubber, not seeming to want to respond, but he persevered, not letting go of the bed until the ground stopped vibrating beneath his feet. Slowly, he dragged himself over to the washroom by the corner of his room, his bare feet not so agreeable with the cold hospital flooring. Once inside the washroom, he locked the door and silently congratulated himself on not getting caught.

 

Now all he had to do was brush his teeth so that there would be no evidence left of him having eaten, and freshen up a bit before one of the nurses ventured into the room to do it for him. One benefit of having a private room was the exceptionally large washroom with the attached showering area. There was a plastic chair built into the wall under it and railings to use for support. Tom figured that he was up for an unassisted shower, especially because he felt self-conscious now that he had a reason to want to appear decent. And that reason was none other than Russell Varon – the tall, broad shouldered, muscular, dark haired man with the kind brown eyes and mischievous smile. Just thinking about Russell made Tom feel both nervous and exhilarated at the same time.

 

Before the plane crash, Tom never would have admitted that he was attracted to men just as often as he was attracted to women. He had spent most of his adult life keeping his eyes to himself in locker rooms and public restrooms, and had never dared venture anywhere near a gay establishment. But that hadn’t stopped him from feeling the occasional pull to the opposite side of the tracks, or prevented him from becoming unusually flustered when a good looking man happened to check him out. But meeting Russell and being lured in by his suave personality had nothing to do with experimenting or giving into his repressed urges. There was something inside of Tom that was screaming at him that Russell was _the one_. He’d never believed in love at first sight until that scruffy park ranger had walked into his hospital room with that lively little plant and had looked at him as if no one in else in the universe mattered.   So, Tom felt quite pressured to make himself look a little more appealing for Russell to be around.

 

As morally degrading as hospital gowns were, they were very easy to shirk out of, and the pants were loose enough to kick off without a fuss. Within minutes, Tom was basking under the warm spray of the shower, delighting in the nearly silky feeling of the water running off his skin. He reached up to adjust the trajectory of the showerhead, catching the railing when he swayed dizzily for a moment. Once the dizziness had passed, he nudged the showerhead again in the opposite direction to make sure that the water wouldn’t hit his injured chest. He then sat down on the plastic chair and helped himself to the shampoo from the dispenser on the shower wall, followed by the body soap, scrubbing his scalp and washing his body several times. Sometime during his fifth application of the body wash, he abruptly returned to his senses, realizing that something was amiss. It wasn’t that he felt like he needed to cleanse himself that many times, rather the body wash was just an excuse for staying under the water for much longer than was necessary. Now the water was eerily charged with some kind of energy that felt like static, seeping into Tom’s skin and electrifying his nerve endings. Water had never felt so sensational, or so devastatingly corruptive. How long had he been sitting there? When Tom realized that he had lost all concept of the time, he began to feel very unsettled. No longer enjoying the shower, Tom quickly stopped the water and grabbed onto the railing. It was then that he noticed that the hospital staff hadn’t provided any towels for the shower. He was absolutely not going to press the call button to request any.

 

Showing how resourceful he was, Tom came close to emptying the paper towel supply in order to dry both his body and his hair, put his hospital garb back on, and hurriedly returned to his bed. Just in time to avoid being caught by Dr. Feld.

 

Tom pulled the bed sheets up to his neck, ensuring that his arms were completely covered and inaccessible, and feigned a sleepiness that he no longer felt.

 

“Mr. Underlay,” Dr. Feld muttered as he stalked into the room, took out Tom’s patient chart from the end of the bed, and flipped through it with disinterest. “And what did you and Mr. Varon have to talk about today?” He leveled his beady black eyes on Tom as he pulled out a pen and scribbled something down on the chart.

 

“Excuse me?” Tom was caught off guard because he hadn’t thought that Russell had introduced himself to Dr. Feld, and because Russell’s early morning visit was supposed to have been a secret.

 

“That’s what we make the visitors sign in and out for, Mr. Underlay,” Dr. Feld stated as he continued to scrutinize his patient. “So, I’ll ask you again. What did you and Mr. Varon talk about today?”

 

Tom hesitated before answering. “I wasn’t aware that he had visited. I just woke up the now.”

 

Dr. Feld replaced the chart back into its slot and came to stand at the head of the bed. “Sit up,” he ordered, completely doing away with any and all pretenses. He impatiently waited for Tom to struggle into a sitting position before he yanked both pillows away from him and began to shake them out onto the bed.

 

“What are you doing?” Tom asked in alarm.

 

“Searching for contraband. Because, while Mr. Varon may seem to think that he knows everything in that de-evolved brain of his, he is not the doctor. I am. You have been told not to eat anything, and that includes sandwiches, fruits, and things like _pudding_.”

 

“Why am I not allowed to eat anything? I feel much better now… and I have an appetite…”

 

“You will receive all your nutrition and fluid requirements through an IV drip that will take place between the hours of noon and three o’clock today. Anything that you consume in addition to that may have an adverse effect on your compromised immune system.”

 

“My compromised immune system…?” Tom repeated in bewilderment.

 

“Your test results have revealed several disturbing anomalies. Failing to heed your physician’s advice will only serve to complicate your condition.”

 

Tom began to feel frightened when Dr. Feld tore the bed sheets away from him and tossed them onto the floor, becoming more aggressive as he scanned the bed area for any signs of crumbs or evidence of any sort. Were doctors allowed to act this volatile in front of their patients? Especially ones who had just been released from the ICU and were sensitive to such extreme behavior? “Oww!” Tom yelped and turned to glare at Dr. Feld when the older man shoved his legs out of the way to search under them. But the doctor gave no indication that he cared he had hurt Tom and grabbed for his patient’s hands next. “Stop being so rough,” Tom protested angrily, beginning to struggle against him.

 

“You keep that up and I will restrain you,” Dr. Feld said coldly, prying Tom’s hands open to ensure that he wasn’t concealing anything in them. He seemed dissatisfied when he wasn’t able to find anything. “What you are failing to understand, Mr. Underlay, is that there are higher powers at play here. Powers that you don’t want to mess with. If you insist on refusing to cooperate, I will have you thrown into quarantine so fast it will make your head spin.”

 

Tom started when Dr. Feld grabbed hold of the back of his gown and tore it open, and then flinched when the cold metal of a stethoscope pressed up against his bare back. He immediately began to tremble, feeling violated by the doctor’s abusive methods and scare tactics.

 

“Breathe in,” Dr. Feld commanded, swearing when his patient just sat there shivering. “I said, _breathe in_ ,” he repeated, emphasizing the order by grabbing Tom hard by his shoulder and pulling him backwards.

 

Tom forced himself to inhale, keeping his eyes downcast and trying to will the trembling to stop.

 

“Breathe out.” Dr. Feld didn’t praise Tom on his obedience, paying more attention to the sound of his patient’s frantic heartbeat. “Now lie down so that I can change your dressing.”

 

“No,” Tom refused, his voice laced with fear. “I want another doctor to do it.”

 

Dr. Feld gritted his teeth and seized Tom by his upper arm, yanking him in close so that he could really terrorize his helpless patient. “You see those two men out there?”

 

Tom bit into his lower lip to keep silent, not able to fight Dr. Feld, but also not wanting to lose control in front of him. He followed Dr. Feld’s wildly gesturing arm, noticing the two men from the transportation department standing outside in the hallway. Their expressions were very different from what they had been on the previous days Tom had seen them. They were no longer pretending to be impartial bystanders in the background. Today they looked like merciless, cold-hearted torturers who were just begging for a reason to be called into Tom’s room.

 

“I know that you don’t think they’re from the transportation department, and you’re right, they’re not. If I have to call them in here, you will be very sorry, Mr. Underlay. Very sorry, indeed.”

 

“Why are you doing this to me?” Tom asked, his voice breaking when he was shoved onto his back and the gown pulled away from his body. “Are you trying to punish me for being the only one to survive that plane crash? Is that it? Or is it because you can’t accept the miraculous way I was spared from fate? Perhaps the explanation for my survival goes beyond the comprehension of your ill-gained PhD!”

 

“Miraculous? I think not. What we are mainly concerned with, Mr. Underlay, is why you are not dead. And we will continue to conduct as many tests as we see fit until we are able to reach a logical conclusion. You see, it was scientifically impossible for you to have survived that plane crash when all the other passengers were killed immediately on impact. Even your wife who was sitting in the window seat beside you, and the man who had the aisle seat on your other side, were killed instantly in the crash. But not you. You – one man out of one hundred and thirty-six – not only landed in the water, but managed to survive for over twenty-four hours exposed to the elements. Yes, you did sustain injuries, but _this_ ,” he tapped the bandages covering Tom’s chest on a diagonal slant downwards, “is very minor when compared to the carnage that your fellow passengers became. You, Mr. Underlay, are something of a freak of nature.” After a brief pause, Dr. Feld glared at Tom. “Why are these bandages wet?”

 

“I had an accident with the water pitcher,” Tom immediately lied, not wanting Dr. Feld to know that he possessed the strength to take a shower on his own. Because after he was done with this humiliating encounter, he promised himself that he would be leaving the hospital of his own free will. Dr. Feld scared him and made him feel like he was nothing more than a lab rat to be pricked, and prodded, and pushed to his limitations.

 

“There’s no such thing as an accident, Mr. Underlay.” Dr. Feld raked his fingers through Tom’s still damp hair, giving him a dirty look that said he could not be deceived or lied to.

 

Tom couldn’t prevent himself from crying out when Dr. Feld unceremoniously pulled off the bloody bandages in one tearing motion, dropping them onto the floor next to the discarded sheets. He then ran his fingers over the length of stitches starting at the center of Tom’s breastbone and ending along the right side of his ribcage. When Tom tried to escape Dr. Feld’s abhorred treatment, he was held down with one hand on his chest, panicking when the tip of a syringe entered his peripheral vision. “No, don’t!” He struggled harder, tears stinging the corners of his eyes.

 

“I think this kind of aggressive behavior justifies the use of sedation, wouldn’t you agree?” Dr. Feld continued to restrain Tom with the one hand and cruelly jabbed the business end of the syringe into his patient’s arm with the other. He injected the sedative into Tom almost gleefully, as if having full control over his patients was the only thing that gave him pleasure. As Tom felt the world slip away from him, he heard Dr. Feld speaking to another man who had entered the room. “I had him under constant sedation until some man by the name of Russell Varon interfered yesterday.”

 

_“I’m not interested in your excuses, Doctor. You owe me a blood sample and an updated progress report.”_

Everything became blurry and played in slow motion as Tom began to lose his tenuous grip on consciousness.

 

“You don’t seem to understand. This Varon character might actually be a threat. He came in here reciting hospital policies and patient rights.”

 

_“Russell Varon is nothing but an underpaid, overworked park ranger with a limited education. You’re being paid well for your troubles, Doctor. Surely you can handle a meddling, brainless twit of a man like Varon. What is he to Underlay anyway, a family friend?”_

“We’re not sure…”

_“Don’t make me repeat myself, Doctor. The blood sample!”_

“What exactly are you looking for? All his test results have come back negative…”

Tom sank into the mattress, all the energy escaping him as his breathing slowed and his mind went blank. The last sensation that he could recall before he faded away was the touch of a hand on his brow, much like a man might stroke his dog, and the unnerving buzz of electricity that surrounded it.

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Day 8: Afternoon**

Getting through an afternoon in the Glades required an adequate supply of water, a change of clothing, and a heck of a lot of antiperspirant. While most people in the city would be sipping at their 500ml bottles of water throughout the day, Russell would be chugging down a liter at regular intervals.

 

They were understaffed today so Russell was performing the duties for two people, lugging away sections of trees that had been felled by the crashed plane, testing the water alkalinity, capturing a stray dog that had wandered too close to the alligator pond, and transplanting some of the aquatic plant life from one area of the park to another. By the time he was relieved for lunch, he was saturated in sweat, heaving like an overworked mule, and dying of thirst. He’d been working for six hours with no break and was just getting to eat at three o’clock. Thankfully he’d had the foresight to pack himself some of those energy bars, much like the one he had left with Tom, or else he would have passed out hours ago.

 

“You sure can eat,” Russell’s coworker, Mona Gomez, whistled as she led the stray dog into Ranger Station 4, past Russell’s feast, and into the back where the kennels were. When she reappeared, she caught Russell making short work of sandwich number three, which he seemed to be breathing in. “Hey, slow down,” she laughed. “You have another half hour for your break.”

 

“Yeah, I know, but I was thinking of cutting it short so I can leave a bit early today.”

 

“Oh? You have somewhere you need to be?” She rolled her eyes when Russell ignored her for teasing him. “What? I can’t ask? It’s not like you’re going home to Mariel.”

 

“Nope. Signed the papers for that this morning. You’re looking at a newly divorced man, Mona.” Russell finished wolfing down his lunch and wiped his hands off on his jeans. He pulled his short sleeved ranger shirt back on over his t-shirt, but didn’t bother to button it up.

 

“I thought that you usually change your shirt halfway through.”

 

“Not today. I’m saving it for later.”

 

“Saving it for who?”

 

Russell grinned as he picked up the keys to his truck and cleared off the table that he’d been eating at. The table that they usually used for dissecting animals when they were performing necropsies. “Get back to work, Mona.” He was about to switch his cell phone back to manner mode and jam it into his back pocket when it began to ring.

 

“Your girlfriend’s calling,” Mona joked, trudging back outside to prep the air boat for another trip through the marshes.

 

On any regular day, Russell would have chosen to ignore a number that he wasn’t familiar with. What with the telemarketers and wrong numbers, he had had enough of telling people where to go over the phone. But he had been checking his cell phone off and on since he’d started work that morning, hoping that he might get a phone call from Tom. He hoped that Tom had found the small snack that he’d left and had been able to eat it in private. Because he seriously doubted that Dr. Feld had any intention of putting Tom back on a regular diet any time soon. Whatever the doctor was trying to pull, Russell wasn’t going to sit back and tolerate it.

 

“Hello?” He put the phone to his ear and listened, but all he could hear was faint breathing in the background. Great! He’d just been suckered into answering the phone to his first crank caller of the week. “Hello!” He repeated, opting to give the caller the benefit of the doubt. Strangely enough, he heard what sounded like an announcement in the background.

 

_“Doctor Turner, please pick up line two. Doctor Turner, you have a call on line two.”_

Russell clutched the phone closer to his ear and listened harder. He could barely hear someone breathing softly but rapidly on the other end. “Tom?”

 

_“Russell…hi. Are you busy?”_

It sounded like Tom was having difficulty breathing or was upset because his speech sounded too low and impaired. “No, I’m on my break now. Is everything okay?” When Russell heard what sounded like sniffling on the other end, followed by a sharp intake of breath, he tensed up. “Tom…?”

 

_“I just wanted to thank you for the granola bar and the juice…”_

Although Russell hadn’t known Tom for long, he could tell that something was off about this telephone conversation. “Tom, is something wrong?” He asked gently. There was a pause on the other end, and then a heavy sigh.

 

_“Are you going to visit later?”_

“Didn’t you get my note?”

 

_“I did but… it wasn’t specific.”_

“You sound upset. Did something happen?”

_“When you come, can you please get me a self discharge form from the front desk? I asked the staff here but… no one would give it to me.”_

There was definitely something wrong. “Tom, what happened? You’re in no condition to leave the hospital on your own. You could get hurt…”

 

_“If I stay here… I am going to get hurt.”_

Russell’s expression constricted upon hearing the fear in Tom’s voice. He motioned for Mona to stop when she came back in and grabbed an armful of plants, about to go out again to start up the air boat. “It’s that doctor again, isn’t it? Listen, Tom, I’m leaving work now. I’ll be over there in around thirty minutes… _with_ the form that you asked for. Can you hang on until then?”

 

_“I’ll try. Thanks, Russ.”_

 

Then the line went dead. “Dammit!” Russell pocketed his phone and took his ranger jacket off again, tossing his sweaty t-shirt on top of it. Damn that mean-spirited doctor and his callous attitude. What had he done to Tom this time? It had to have been something genuinely upsetting for Tom to have made a phone call like that to someone he barely knew anything about.

 

“This is not the men’s locker room, Varon,” Mona said in mild disgust.

 

“Mona, can you cover for me for the rest of the afternoon? I have an emergency that just came up.” Russell dug into his backpack that was sitting on a nearby chair, pulled out his deodorant and reapplied it. Then he changed into the grey t-shirt that he’d been saving for later on.

 

“Do you have any idea how many plants there are here?”

 

“I’ll owe you big. Seriously, I need to go.”

 

“You’re going to owe me a double shift for this, Russell.” Mona sighed and watched her coworker race out of the ranger station, jump into an Everglades National Park truck and kick up dirt as he peeled off down the trail.

 

* * *

 

When Russell reached the hospital, he strode right to the front desk and ran straight into Mariel, who was distractedly walking down the hall with her face in a chart.

 

“Oh! Sorry!” Mariel exclaimed, before realizing whose feet she had stepped on. “Russell, what are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be at work?” She tucked a strand of blond hair behind her ear, straightened up, and stared at him in confusion.

 

“Yeah, but something came up. Could you do me a favor and get me a self discharge release form?”

 

A moment ago, Mariel had been lost in whatever information she’d been absorbing, but now her ex-husband had her full attention. Dropping the chart out of sight, she tried to figure out what he was up to. “For what patient? The self discharge of a patient form needs to be filled out first.”

 

“What’s that one for?”

 

“It’s for the attending doctor to assess the mental capacity of the patient. Basically to decide whether or not the patient is capable of understanding his condition and making informed decisions, like deciding to leave the hospital against the physician’s medical advice.”

 

Russell not only distrusted Dr. Feld, but he was also beginning to hate him for the unjustified way he was treating Tom. If he had to rely on Dr. Feld to assess Tom’s mental capacity, he might as well just leave the form at the front desk and not even bother. Whatever Dr. Feld’s reasons, he seemed to be determined to keep Tom in the hospital and incapacitated for as long as possible. How far was he willing to go in order to confine Tom against his will? Russell did not want to find out.

 

“Can’t you fill it out?”

 

Now Mariel was looking at him suspiciously. “That depends… You still haven’t told me the patient’s name. I hope you’re not referring to a patient who has been sectioned.”

 

Thankfully, Tom was not being detained against his will under the Mental Health Act, but Dr. Feld might resort to that if given the time to pull it off. “No. I want to get Tom Underlay out of here. This afternoon.”

 

Mariel grabbed Russell by the arm and pulled him close while lowering her voice. “You didn’t mention that you knew Tom Underlay.”

 

“It kind of just happened recently.” Russell also began to whisper, keeping an eye out for either Dr. Feld or the suspicious men who were shadowing Tom around the hospital. “Look, Mariel, something is really off about the way Tom is being treated here. Dr. Feld is trying to keep him sedated against his will and is performing all these unnecessary tests on him. I don’t know if it’s a conspiracy or a cover-up, but Tom wants out of here and I’m going to help him.”

 

“You’re right that something is going on with Underlay, but I don’t know if it’s something you want to get involved in. They’re restricting which members of staff have access to his room and he’s been assigned to Dr. Feld, exclusively. There are also strange men lurking around his room who are exempt from signing in or identifying themselves. Then there are the blood tests… For some bizarre reason, his blood samples are being sent to a private lab to be analyzed.”

 

“That’s exactly why I need to get him out of here. Will you help me?”

 

Mariel glanced down the hall to make sure that they were still alone before studying the urgent look on Russell’s face. “I can’t make any promises. I’ll talk to him and assess whether he’s mentally competent… If he is, and I do fill out that form, you’d better be prepared to take full responsibility for it. If Dr. Feld asks me about it, I’m not going to let on that I know anything about any conspiracy or whatnot, or else it’ll be my job on the line. I’m just going to say that you took him out of here against my medical advice.”

 

“That’s fine by me. Do whatever you have to do.”

 

Russell followed Mariel down to Tom’s room where it was completely dark. Despite it still being mid-afternoon, all the lights were off and there wasn’t a nurse in sight. Mariel turned on the light, the yellowish glow illuminating Tom sleeping in the bed.

 

“Tom?” Russell neared the bed and placed a hand on Tom’s shoulder, which caused the brunette to flinch. He was met with two dazed blue eyes for a second, before Tom’s eyelids slid shut again. “Shit! That bastard sedated him again!”

 

“Keep your voice down,” Mariel shushed him, beginning to check Tom’s vital signs. She frowned when she noticed the fresh needle marks on Tom’s arms, along with random bruising that seemed to be associated with someone holding him down. “Russell… I don’t think I can do this.”

 

“Why not? We can wake him and get him to answer your questions.”

 

“That’s not what I meant. I’m obligated to file a report if I suspect abusive conduct towards a patient. This more than qualifies.”

 

“Russell,” Tom murmured, struggling to respond to Russell’s voice.

 

“I’m here, Tom.” Russell took Tom’s hand and held it reassuringly. “This is Mariel. She’s going to help you, okay? She’s going to file a report against that son-of-a-bitch Dr. Feld. He won’t be able to come near you again.” Or hurt you again, Russell angrily wanted to add.

 

“No… please… get me out of here. There’s another man… a dangerous man…” Tom attempted to sit up, using all his willpower to fight against the freshly administered sedative that was dulling his mind and restricting his body.

 

Russell wrapped an arm around Tom’s back and helped him to sit up. Tom felt cold and shivery against him, so he pulled him closer in an attempt to warm him up. “What dangerous man?”

 

“They’re all involved. Dr. Feld… those men from the… transportation… department…” Tom gasped, running out of breath, and then began to cough. Mariel was immediately at his side, offering him a glass of water, and pulling out her stethoscope to check his breathing.

 

“Just relax and take a deep breath,” Mariel said soothingly, trying to get Tom to calm down. Unlike Dr. Feld, Mariel’s bedside manner was actually pleasant, and she only needed to slip the stethoscope through the back of the gown to listen to his lungs. “Everything sounds okay. When was the last time you drank anything?”

 

Tom shot Russell a panicked look, which Russell immediately interpreted as the brunette not knowing whether or not he could trust Mariel. “It’s okay, Tom. Just answer the question.”

 

“I drank the juice you left me.”

 

“I gave you that juice this morning. What have you drunk since then?” Russell had dropped off that juice over seven hours ago. That couldn’t be the only thing that Tom had drunk all day.

 

“Nothing.”

 

That was when Mariel and Russell noticed that Tom was not drinking from the glass that he’d been given.

 

“You have to drink something,” Russell said in frustration, unable to hide the concern in his voice. “Especially if that asshole took more blood samples from you without your consent.”

 

“Dr. Feld put something… in the… water.”

 

Russell snatched the glass out of Tom’s hands, and slammed it down onto the bedside table. “Mariel, can you please fill out that form now? We don’t know how many people are involved in this or what they want with Tom. If someone higher up is involved, reporting Dr. Feld could just put Tom in more danger. Look at what he’s already done to him.” Russell furiously gestured at the bruises covering Tom’s arms, looking like he might not be able to restrain himself if Dr. Feld were to walk in the room now.

 

Although their marriage hadn’t worked out, Russell and Mariel had no problem working together when it involved something they felt mutually strong about. In this case, finding evidence of patient abuse had been enough to sway Mariel’s opinion to side with Russell. She held out her clipboard with the attached form and sat beside Tom to go over the details with him.

 

“Russell, do you have any clothing you can lend Tom? His sister-in-law brought his daughter in for a visit yesterday afternoon, but she didn’t bring any of his personal items.”

 

“His daughter?” Russell repeated in surprise.

 

“Kira,” Tom said softly, smiling despite how horrible he felt.

 

Mariel smiled as well, remembering the little girl with the big grayish-green eyes and long brown hair. “She’s a really cute, little girl. So polite.”

 

Filing that information away for later, Russell fished his car keys out of his pocket. “I have a spare pair of jeans in my truck, but that’s about it.” He hurried out to his truck to get them, wondering what he was going to do about the shirt.

 

By the time Russell got back to the room, Mariel had finished filling out the form and had moved onto the self discharge release form, which she got Tom to sign and date.

 

“All done,” Mariel announced encouragingly, hoping to get Tom to relax a little. But it didn’t seem like he would be able to do so until he was outside and as far away from the hospital as possible. He looked pretty awful, worse than he had two days ago, and was barely holding it together. She worried that he might pass out before they succeeded in getting him out of the hospital.

 

Russell placed the folded pair of jeans into Tom’s lap and then pulled off the t-shirt he was wearing, dropping it on top of them. Mariel just about had a fit when she saw him do that.

 

“You’re not really going to walk through the hospital like that, are you?! I’ll never be able to live it down if someone sees you.”

 

“I have another shirt. It’s just a little damp.” Russell pulled on the shirt that he’d been wearing earlier, catching Tom admiring his muscular physique before the brunette quickly dropped his gaze.

 

“Damp with what?” Mariel made a face and tried not to get too close to her ex-husband and his sweat-drenched t-shirt. “We’ll give you a few minutes to get dressed, okay, Tom?”

 

“Thank you.” Tom blinked back the sleep from his eyes and began to pull off the hospital gown as soon as he had the room to himself.

 

Outside in the hall, Mariel paced back and forth nervously, probably hoping that she had made the right decision. “Where are you going to take him, Russell? He doesn’t have any relatives living in Homestead and his deceased wife’s sister doesn’t seem to want to have anything to do with him. She only brought Kira to visit but didn’t come in herself. While I agree that it’s best to get him out of this environment, I’m worried that he might have an accident if left alone.”

 

“So I’ll stay with him tonight. He lives at a fixed address, doesn’t he? And he probably won’t want to be alone after all that’s happened anyway.”

 

“What makes you so sure he’s going to want you to stay with him?” Mariel asked skeptically. “Dr. Feld left him with some pretty understandable trust issues. And you still haven’t told me where you know Tom from. I don’t think that he runs in the same circles as you do.”

 

“This is going to sound completely ridiculous, but I saw him in the ICU the other day and felt sorry for him. So, I visited him… and we hit it off… and…” Russell trailed off guiltily.

 

“Oh my God! I don’t know what is more disgusting, Russell. The fact that you hit on a patient who just survived a plane crash, or the fact that you lied to me about being into men when I asked you all those years ago, after I found gay porn in the history folder on the computer.”

 

“Who asked you to go through the history folder?! At least I never cheated on you,” Russell shot back. “As soon as we got all the papers drawn up for our divorce, you brought up this mystery man that you’ve been seeing for – I’m sorry, how long have you been seeing him?”

 

“Just two weeks. It’s not that much of an overlap. And at least he’s not married.”

 

“Neither is Tom.”

 

Mariel groaned in exasperation. “You’re right. He’s recently widowed. His wife was killed in a plane crash. Last week,” she enunciated very slowly and clearly, as if she were talking to a complete fool. “I don’t think that he’s ready to get into another relationship, or to suddenly decide that he’s gay.”

 

“That’s not the feeling I was getting off of him yesterday. Of course it sucks that his wife died. It’s horrible and I can’t even begin to imagine what he’s going through. But there’s just something about him - something really _positive_. He wants to move on and live his life. And he wants to do that with me.”

 

“You’re out of your mind,” Mariel said, sounding less amused now. “You know nothing about this guy. Absolutely nothing. And he knows nothing about you. But you’re making it sound like you two have already exchanged vows.”

 

“Stranger things have happened,” Russell said flippantly.

 

“Be careful with rebound relationships, Russell. They never end well.”

 

“I hope you’re going to take your own advice,” he snapped at her. Thinking that Tom had been given enough time to change, he placed his hand on the doorknob, and paused. “Look, we’re divorced now. And we won’t have to live together for much longer. So let’s try to stop judging each other and just live our separate lives. Fighting is for married couples.”

 

Mariel inclined her head in agreement. “I’ll try if you’ll try. Oh, and Russell?”

 

“What?”

 

“Be careful,” she warned.


	8. Chapter 8

**Day 8: Evening**

The drive to Tom’s house was uneventful, but took a while because Russell stopped off at his own place to pick up a few things first. There was only one supermarket in Homestead and it wasn’t on the way, so Russell hadn’t had much to offer Tom in the way of food or drinks. He’d felt incredibly embarrassed when he had passed Tom the half-eaten sandwich that he’d been saving for later, and the 4 liter jug of filtered lukewarm water that was sitting on the floor on the passenger’s side. But being deprived of any and all food for over a week had made Tom willing to eat anything. As Russell drove down the long, dusty strip of highway in search of Basswood Drive, he occasionally glanced at Tom, watching him finish off what was left of the ham sandwich. The water jug, on the other hand, had been a disastrous idea. Russell cursed and pulled over to the side of the road when Tom upended the jug all over his borrowed jeans and the lower section of his borrowed t-shirt, which were too loose on his lean frame to begin with.

 

“Sorry, my arms…,” Tom began, looking miserable again for soaking the passenger’s side of the truck. His arms were trembling from the weight of the jug, still covered in bruises and needle marks that were beginning to scab. For anyone who didn’t know better, Tom might look like a serious drug user, the markings were that bad.

 

“Don’t worry about it. It’s just water.” Russell didn’t care about the truck. He was more concerned about Tom’s comfort than anything else. Just looking at the bruises ignited his fiery temper, especially because some bruises were darker than others, an indication that the physical abuse wasn’t an isolated incident. How long had it been going on for? And why had Dr. Feld been treating Tom so callously? Leaning over, Russell took the jug away from Tom and did his best to dry both Tom and the surrounding area with an old towel. “How much longer to your place?”

 

“Maybe thirty minutes.”

 

“Then you’d better drink something.” Russell took his tumbler out of the cup holder, rolled down the window, and tossed out his leftover coffee. Worrying that he might be coming off as a bit of a slob, but not having any other alternative, he rinsed the tumbler out with a bit of water and then filled it for Tom. “Here, try this.”

 

“Thanks.” Again, Tom didn’t seem to mind that there had been coffee in the container before, or that Russell had been drinking from it. He thirstily gulped down half of it before easing off a bit to drink in a more civilized manner.

 

“You’re out in the middle of no man’s land,” Russell commented as he continued to drive for another twenty minutes without hitting Basswood Drive.

 

“The land was cheaper up here. I didn’t have much left after paying off my tuition, and raising a child costs a small fortune, so it was either no man’s land or a basement apartment.”

 

“Tell me about it,” Russell sighed, agreeing with the financial burden of raising a child. “I have a son. He’s going on eight now. Replacing his ripped clothing and lost shoes every month costs more than I have to spare.”

 

There was a bit of tension in the car for a few minutes before Tom could work up the courage to ask the disturbing question that Russell’s admission had inspired. “You’re married?”

 

Russell quickly placed his hand over Tom’s to reassure him. “No. I’m divorced. Mariel is my ex-wife.”

 

“Mariel? Oh, okay.” Tom breathed an audible sigh of relief and closed his eyes, allowing Russell to begin to stroke his hand. “Thanks for doing this, Russ. I really appreciate it.”

 

“What? You mean staying with you? You don’t have to thank me for that. I think that after what happened yesterday, I’d like to spend more time with you to get to know you better.”

 

Tom turned his head towards the window so that Russell wouldn’t see him blushing and changed the subject. “I hope that I’ll recover a lot quicker now that Dr. Feld is out of the picture. The sooner I can get back on my feet… the sooner I can take Kira home with me.”

 

“How old is Kira?”

 

“Seven, which would make her the same age as your son.”

 

“Physically, maybe. Mentally, I doubt it. Mariel said Kira was polite, but Jesse is a handful. If he’s not painting on the walls, he’s burying your shoes in the sand.”

 

“I can see the resemblance,” Tom teased, opening his eyes again to catch Russell grinning at him.

 

“Remind me to bury your shoes later on.”

 

Another fifteen minutes down the completely black, unlit highway, Russell’s high beams hit a road sign that was partially obstructed by a towering oak tree and its moss covered branches. “Basswood Drive,” he announced as he turned onto the yet-to-be paved dirt road that led to a newly developed residential area. The houses were pretty small, but set far apart, making it ideal for small families that were just starting out.

 

Tom’s house was at the end of a small lane, a single-story mauve bungalow with white trimmings, hedges surrounding the property, and a gate leading to a fairly large looking backyard. The lights on the street had yet to be installed, so Tom’s house was cloaked in darkness, making it the perfect target for burglars.

 

“How long have you been living here?” Russell asked out of curiosity.

 

“Less than a year. I know, they still haven’t put up any lights. They’re too busy building more houses to sell.” Tom was having a lot less difficulty speaking coherently after he’d gone through the 500 milliliters of water that Russell had rationed him, but the side effects and lasting discomfort of the sedative were another story.

 

Russell got out of the truck and went over to the passenger’s side to get the door for Tom. He waited until Tom shakily climbed out, and then locked the vehicle. As they approached the veranda, Tom stopped suddenly and looked at the house with dread, as if there were ghosts lurking inside. Russell paused as well, keeping an eye on the unsteady way Tom was walking. The cumulative side effects of being heavily sedated were still making him feel dizzy and weak, which was in turn making Russell very nervous. The last thing he wanted was to have to take Tom back to the emergency room if his condition suddenly worsened. Mariel had given him everything he would need to take care of Tom for a few days, but had also warned him that anything could go wrong in that time. She would also need to make a home call to remove Tom’s stitches in a week or so as well.

 

“Whoa, easy there,” Russell exclaimed when Tom swayed on his feet. He moved closer to support Tom with an arm around his slim waist, avoiding touching him anywhere near his injured arms or chest. It was a wonder that Tom was still standing, considering everything he had endured, plus the twelve or so pounds that Mariel estimated he had lost while under Dr. Feld’s abusive care. The adrenaline of having escaped the hospital undetected was most likely the only thing keeping Tom from passing out.

 

“Maybe we can go back to your house,” Tom suggested faintly, grabbing onto Russell’s arm when the dizziness got worse.

 

“I wish we could, but Mariel is still living there with Jesse. I just don’t think they’d be comfortable with that,” Russell said apologetically, knowing fully well why Tom didn’t want to return to his own house.

 

“Grace would’ve felt the same way if a strange man had wanted to stay in the house while Kira was at home,” Tom said sadly.

 

Grace Underlay – Tom’s wife. The poor woman who had been killed in the plane crash, leaving Tom to raise their young daughter alone. But that was before Russell had entered the picture. He was determined to see Tom through this, no matter what he needed to do to ease the poor man’s pain. He was already too emotionally invested in Tom to walk away now, and he didn’t think he could even if he wanted to.

 

“Come on, let’s get you inside before your neighbors think we’re casing the place.”

 

The air inside the house was stale and dusty, and the light switch in the hallway jammed when Russell tried to flick it on. He kept at it, trying to loosen it with his nail while Tom disappeared into the back of the house. Not worrying too much about Tom’s silent retreat, because it was his house and he probably knew where he was going, Russell forced the light switch into the on position. The hallway lights flickered on, allowing him to find the light in the living room, and then the kitchen next. Most of the light switches were stiff, and some lights were dimmer than others.

 

Russell entered the living room and threw open the front window for fresh air, also having trouble getting it to clear the warped window frame it was set in. Come to think of it, there was a bit of a draft coming in from a corner of the ceiling, too. Having a good deal of carpenting experience himself, Russell had no trouble locating the areas of the house where the builders had cut corners, or just plain done a shoddy job. The electricity wasn’t hooked up properly either. Tom hadn’t been kidding when he’d implied that he hadn’t had a lot of money to put towards the purchase of a new house. If he hadn’t gotten this one dirt cheap, he’d been fleeced out of whatever savings he’d had left. Sure, the house that Russell had built had its own problems, but at least he had properly installed the insulation between the walls.

 

“Tom?” Russell called down the hall after scavenging through the kitchen for something to make for dinner. “You have a bunch of expired crap in the fridge. I’m going to dump it, okay?” There was no answer. “Tom?” Shit! Had he fainted and Russell just hadn’t noticed?

 

Dropping the expired milk carton into the sink, Russell hurried down the hall until he got to the room at the end that had a light on with the door half closed. He pushed the door inwards, exhaling shakily when he found Tom standing by the dresser with a picture frame in his hands.

 

“Didn’t you hear me calling you?” When Tom still didn’t respond, Russell went over to where he was standing and peered into his face. The brunette was clutching the picture frame close to his chest while surveying the rest of the family collection that decorated the dresser in front of him. His eyes were filled with tears and he was trembling, haunted by the memories of a wife whom he would never see again. “Tom, come here.” Russell gently pulled the framed wedding photo out of Tom’s hands and carefully embraced him. He held Tom close and stroked his hair soothingly, trying to ease his sorrow away.

 

“I lost my wedding ring, Russ,” Tom choked through his tears, making it sound as if he had committed some unforgivable sin.

 

“Where did you put it last?” Russell asked, hoping that it wasn’t really lost because Tom had been through enough already. The last thing he needed was to have lost something of such important sentimental value.

 

“I was wearing it… on the flight… I’m positive.”

 

“Then maybe the hospital has it. They remove all your jewelry in the emergency room. It’s standard procedure,” Russell said calmly. “I’ll call Mariel in the morning to see if she can find it.” Tom seemed to accept that explanation because he said nothing more on the subject. A long span of silence followed with Russell continuing to stroke Tom’s hair, waiting for him to move or speak.

 

When Tom placed both palms on Russell’s chest and rested his head there, Russell thought that it was because the brunette wanted to be held tighter. But after a moment, Tom’s hands came up to brush against the dark stubble of Russell’s jaw, and then held his face still. What happened next occurred too fast for Russell to stop. One moment, Tom was leaning against him, and the next he was pressing up against him, hard. Russell caught a glimpse of those tear-filled blue eyes for just a second, searching him for something, before Tom was kissing him. Every ounce of common sense in Russell shouted at him to push Tom away, to not take advantage of the brunette’s emotional confusion. But he couldn’t do it.

 

Russell let Tom kiss him, feeling the brunette’s soft lips pressing hungrily against his own. He let Tom lean up to grasp him by his short, dark hair, trying to pull him in closer. As turned on as he was to have Tom in his arms and kissing him, Russell began to sense something strange in Tom’s actions. A clumsiness and lack of direction that only someone who was inexperienced with kissing would have. It was like Tom knew that he wanted something but wasn’t quite sure what that something was. Much like the way Tom had reacted to the flowers in the hospital courtyard, and the scent of the roses in the air, kissing also seemed like something new and sensational that he had never done before. Could this be the result of trauma from the plane crash or Dr. Feld’s negative influence?

 

Not being able to think coherently for long with Tom pressed up against him like that, Russell wrapped both arms around Tom’s waist and pulled him closer, edging backwards until he bumped into the wall. He leaned back against it, taking Tom with him, and returned the kiss with just as much passion. His tongue slipped into Tom’s mouth, teasing him, and then guiding him to do the same. Soon they were kissing with abandon, and in between Tom was rubbing his cheek against Russell’s and biting his ear, and Russell was nudging Tom’s head back to kiss along his jaw, before returning to wet Tom’s lips with the edge of his tongue. And then they were kissing again, all lips, and tongues, and teeth. Russell didn’t think he could take much more of Tom’s soft moaning or the angular hip that was resting too snugly against his crotch. He wanted Tom – now. It didn’t matter whether it was on the bed or on the floor, he just needed to have this beautiful man beneath him, crying out his name and begging for more.

 

Russell skimmed along the waistband of Tom’s borrowed jeans with his fingers and then eased his hand down the back of them. He felt the warm, smooth skin of Tom’s lower back, before pushing lower, until he could grasp the firm flesh of Tom’s buttocks. Russell was pleasantly surprised to find out that Tom was not wearing anything underneath the jeans. After a moment, Tom leaned heavily into him, panting by his ear, and occasionally gasping.

 

“Are you okay?” Russell asked in a low, rough tone as his palm stroked over the curved plane of Tom’s ass, his fingers exploring a little further.

 

Tom was silent, not answering until he could get his breathing under control. “Sorry… I’m really dizzy,” he apologized.

 

“Shit! Sorry! I shouldn’t have--.” Russell began to back off. He froze when Tom reached back to hold his hand in place.

 

“I didn’t mean for you to stop.”

 

It took only a second for Russell’s hormonally driven imagination to catch onto what Tom needed. “The bed?”

 

“No, I can’t.” Somehow that seemed tasteless and disrespectful.

 

That only left the floor. Russell pulled Tom down with him, using his arm to cushion Tom’s head as the brunette stretched out on the floor beneath him. Russell moved his other hand over Tom’s face, gently caressing him as he admired his high cheekbones, the way his long eyelashes fanned out over them, and his perfect kissable lips. “I was screwed from the moment I first laid eyes on you, do you know that?” He confessed, watching those gentle blue eyes open again to gaze up at him.

 

Tom reached up to press his hand against Russell’s cheek, enjoying the sensation of those coarse facial hairs bristling under his palm. “You can’t fight fate, Russell,” he said softly, with a wisdom that he himself couldn’t understand.

 

“Is that what brought us together, Tom? Fate?” Russell leaned down to kiss Tom thoroughly, replacing his hand on those ill-fitting jeans at the waist. But this time he hooked his fingers into the front of them, outlining the jutting edge of Tom’s narrow hipbone. “I’d like to believe that it was mutual attraction,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to the tip of Tom’s nose.

 

“There is that, too,” Tom sighed, wrapping both arms around Russell’s neck to pull him back down and into another smoldering kiss.

 

When the kiss ended, Russell paused with his hand creeping dangerously close to the light brown thatch of hairs that he had exposed by forcing the jeans lower and off of Tom’s hips. “Are you sure you’re okay?” Russell asked again, feeling unsure because of the way Tom’s eyes looked unfocused and the way he kept blinking, as if to clear his vision.

 

“Not entirely, but I don’t want you to stop,” Tom admitted. He latched onto Russell’s wrist and tried to guide his hand lower still.

 

“Hold on.” Russell kept his hand where it was, lightly brushing Tom’s lower abdomen, and looked deeply into those expressive blue eyes. “Have you done this before?”

 

“What? Sex?” Tom asked with a halfway embarrassed laugh.

 

“With a man?” When Tom blushed, Russell began the painful process of reeling in his hormones. They couldn’t do this. Not now. Especially not when Tom was in less than ideal physical condition and grieving over the loss of his wife. While Russell was positively sure that Tom really did want to be with him, he wasn’t certain if Tom was confusing the need for comfort with sexual desire.

 

“Russ, I can figure it out,” Tom insisted, trying to lure Russell back with another kiss. “I’ve read enough literature on the subject.”

 

“Damn it, Tom! You’re driving me insane,” Russell growled, burying his face into the crook of Tom’s neck in frustration. He swore when Tom gasped, obviously liking the feeling of Russell’s lips grazing the skin there. But if Tom had never been with a man before, he was most likely not prepared to be with one now. “Do you have anything?” He asked, desperately hoping that maybe Tom had at least fantasized about it in the past and had perhaps purchased the appropriate products _just in case_.

 

“No,” Tom replied abruptly, sounding offended. “There was only Grace, and I never cheated on her.”

 

“For fuck’s sake, Tom,” Russell swore in disbelief. “I didn’t mean, do you have any STD’s, although thanks for sharing that. I meant, do you have any lube?” When Tom hesitated, revealing his ignorance on the subject, Russell pulled back. “You’re attracted to men, right? You’ve at least thought about being with one?”

 

“Russ, I’m not sexually confused. Yes, I’m attracted to men, but I haven’t ever wanted to be with one until you. So maybe I’m a little unprepared.”

 

“Not having any lube is _very_ unprepared, Tom. I think that we’d better try this again another time.” Russell lay down on the carpeting beside Tom and held him close. “Anyway, you’re supposed to be resting and I’m supposed to be taking care of you, not taking advantage of you.”

 

After a few minutes, Tom spoke up, trying to smooth out the tension between them. “Where can we buy lube? At the supermarket?”

 

As hard as Russell tried, he couldn’t stifle his startled laughter. “You’re so adorably naïve,” he laughed. “I’ll bet that you’ve never set foot inside either the supermarket or the drugstore. You probably just left all the shopping to your wife.”

 

“So… we can’t buy it at the supermarket then?” Tom asked in a much lighter, amused tone.

 

“How about I drive you to the drugstore tomorrow and send you in to find it. If you don’t know what it looks like, you can ask someone,” Russell suggested evilly.

 

“Absolutely not!” Tom protested. “If you want it, you’re going to have to buy it.”

 

Russell nudged Tom’s head up so that he could fondly look at him. “I want it alright. I want you, Tom. But I’m willing to wait.” Russell kissed Tom once more before untangling himself from the brunette. “I’m going to make you something light to eat. Come on, I’ll help you onto the bed.”

 

But Tom’s expression said that he didn’t want to be anywhere near the bed. “Could you just pass me a pillow? I’d rather stay here for a while.”

 

Without saying a word, Russell pulled a pillow off of the bed and set it down beside Tom’s head. He stared at Tom lying there on the dark green carpeting, wearing his jeans and his t-shirt, and felt a pang of longing that made his stomach coil. Taking a blanket off of the bed, he covered Tom up with that too and just watched him for a few minutes, until the brunette drifted off to sleep.


	9. Chapter 9

**Day 9**

A forceful wailing sound wrenched Russell out of his pleasant slumber and tossed him back onto the less than ideal surface that he had fallen asleep on. He woke up with his arm swinging violently in search of his cell phone, needing to silence the alarm. He’d left his cell phone at full volume and had forgotten that he’d set the alarm in the first place.

 

“Russ, your elbow!” Tom shoved at Russell’s arm that had jabbed him in the lower back and tried to cover his head with the blankets to block out the deafening racket. “Are you going to turn that off?”

 

“I have to find it first.” Russell attempted to sit up but realized that he was curled up against Tom’s back with one arm around him, and Tom wasn’t letting go of that arm. They had fallen asleep on the floor of Tom’s bedroom last night, with several empty dishes on the carpeting nearby, and half of Russell’s clothes strewn next to them. After Tom had fallen asleep he hadn’t had the energy to get up off of the floor, so Russell had turned the meal that he’d prepared into a pretend picnic. By the time they’d finished eating, Russell had been too exhausted from his grueling day at work to do more than push the dishes aside, strip down to his underwear, and wrap himself around Tom. Being allowed so close to his new love interest had been reward enough for the seventy or so minutes he had spent washing and cutting up vegetables, frying up a half-frozen fish with those vegetables, and figuring out how to use Tom’s rice cooker that had more functions than the bread machine it had been sitting next to. Tom’s appetite had yet to recover, so Russell had ended up eating most of the rice and more than his fair share of the stir fry.

 

“If I find it first, I promise you that it will never ring again,” Tom threatened.

 

“You know what, I kind of like you in the morning. You’re really feisty,” Russell said sarcastically as he located the phone and thumbed off the alarm. “Shit, it’s already 6 a.m.” Russell nuzzled Tom’s neck and then kissed him on the cheek. “Come on, wake up.” Although he had just met Tom a few days ago, Russell already felt like being this close and intimate with the brunette was like second nature. He liked the way Tom felt in his arms, and he definitely enjoyed touching and kissing him. And judging by how Tom had snuggled closer to him during the night, the brunette obviously felt the same way.

 

“Why do I have to wake up? I still don’t feel so great.”

 

That was probably an understatement. Sometime in the early hours of the morning, Russell had been violently woken up by Tom thrashing around in his sleep and crying out for help. Before Russell could register what was going on or attempt to calm him down, he’d taken a fist to the mouth. It might not have hurt so much if he hadn’t bitten down on the inside of his mouth in reaction to it. Although Russell had a lot of experience with nightmares – both firsthand experience and as an observer – there had been something different about Tom’s behavior. Tom had been inconsolable for several minutes, struggling against Russell’s attempts to embrace him, which had led to a knee to Russell’s groin and scratches down his arm. When he had realized that Tom was having night terrors, and not a nightmare, he had pulled Tom into his arms and held him tightly. Russell hadn’t wanted Tom to hurt himself further by accidentally tearing open his stitches or hitting his bruised arms up against Russell’s knees or elbows.

 

Even after Russell had managed to rouse Tom from whatever horror he’d been reliving, the brunette had continued to look confused and disoriented. He had kept saying that there was something in the house. Not someone. _Something._ He had sounded so convinced that Russell had been persuaded to get up and check all the doors and windows. The only thing that Russell had discovered was that the front window had blown wide open, filling the living room with the twilight sounds of raccoons rummaging through someone’s garbage, leaves rustling on the trees, and insects faintly buzzing in the background. He’d closed the window again and gone back to bed – or to the floor – and spent thirty minutes coaxing Tom back to sleep, and another twenty minutes imagining how he would rearrange Dr. Feld’s face if he ever caught him near Tom again.

 

“I know, but I’ve got to go to work. We’re understaffed at the Glades, so I can’t take a sick day, especially not after I cut out from work early yesterday with no explanation.”

 

“What does that have to do with me?”

 

“We still haven’t discussed Dr. Feld or what happened to you in the hospital. Until we figure out what’s going on with that, I’m not going to feel comfortable leaving you alone. Anyway, Mariel said that I should keep an eye on you for the next forty-eight hours, just to make sure you don’t have an adverse reaction to whatever you were injected with. So, guess what, Tom? You’re going to get to shadow me at work today.” Russell reached down to begin stroking Tom’s face, fawning over the beautiful man that he’d managed to find in the oddest of places. How things would have been different – and empty – if he hadn’t chosen to visit a complete stranger in the hospital.

 

“How are you going to explain me to your colleagues? I don’t think it’s very professional for you to be taking a guest into restricted areas of the Glades.”

 

It would seem that Russell had fallen for a man who was a stickler for the rules. That might turn into a bit of a problem when Tom found out that Russell was forever bending or breaking the rules – and the law – to suit his purposes. “That’s the beauty of being understaffed. There will be nobody there to find out. And this way, I can monitor how much you’re eating and drinking throughout the day. You’ve lost too much weight and you need to exercise your muscles.” After a brief pause, Russell tapped Tom thoughtfully on his cute, narrow nose, and grinned. “You know, I heard that the sheriff’s department is hiring new deputies. You might want to consider handing in your application after you’ve recovered.”

 

“I might just do that,” Tom said with complete sincerity. He slowly pushed himself up into a sitting position, earning himself a heated glare from Russell. “What?” He was still wearing the t-shirt that he had borrowed from Russell, but because it was a bit loose, it had nearly slid off his left shoulder in the night.

 

Russell gently touched Tom’s bare shoulder, causing the brunette to flinch in pain. “Did he do this to you, too?” Russell demanded to know, referring to the dark bruising there.

 

Tom remembered the almost savage way Dr. Feld had yanked him backwards when he had shied away from the cold stethoscope. He’d never been spoken to so callously before, especially never by a doctor. Dr. Feld had manhandled him like he was an animal that couldn’t be trained, losing all patience with him when he had failed to respond in the ideal manner. After the panicked horror of feeling that airplane dropping 1000 feet, coming to groggily in the back of an ambulance, and being sedated over and over again, Tom felt like he had reached his breaking point. He couldn’t understand why Dr. Feld had needed so many blood samples, or why he had been deprived of all foods and liquids, while being isolated from everyone else in the hospital. Or why he had been kept drugged out of his mind. If Russell hadn’t intervened…

 

“It’s okay,” Russell said compassionately, running his fingers through Tom’s hair and effectively disturbing his train of thought. “We can talk about it later.”

 

* * *

 

After showering, getting dressed into the clean clothes that he had picked up yesterday, and eating whatever was left in the cupboards for breakfast, Russell waited for Tom to catch up to him. Tom was moving slowly, almost carefully, around the house. After Tom had showered, Russell had checked the brunette’s stitches and changed his bandages. The wound looked like it would heal nicely, and the needle marks didn’t look as bad as they had last night. Still, Russell instructed Tom to wear long sleeves to cover up the injuries and protect his skin from the sun. It was going to get up to thirty-three degrees Celsius later on in the afternoon, according to the weather forecast, and Tom looked like he burned before he tanned.

 

“You’d better bring something to read while you’re at it,” Russell advised, approving of the loose brown cargo pants and white t-shirt that Tom had chosen to wear. He was carrying a corn blue button-up shirt to wear overtop the t-shirt later, and a cap if he needed to keep the sun out of his eyes. “Something long and interesting,” he added. Though ten to twelve hours going back and forth on an airboat might put Tom to sleep before he could get into his reading material.

 

“I’ve already read everything,” Tom said, sounding troubled. Like he honestly couldn’t get through the day without doing something productive.

 

“Come on, you’ve got at least two hundred books on your bookshelves. Pick something at random and read it again.” It was just his luck that he had fallen for a bookworm. Russell wasn’t much of a reader himself and there wasn’t anything over at Ranger Station 7 for Tom to amuse himself with, so it was either re-read something or sleep the day away. And something told him that Tom wasn’t the type who identified with laziness.

 

“Can you pick something for me? I forgot my sunglasses in the bedroom.”

 

Russell headed over to the bookcase to pick the thickest book he could find when he noticed that there was already a hardcover book sitting out on the coffee table. Maybe Tom had bought it before his trip and had forgotten all about it. That would explain why it wasn’t neatly filed away with the rest of the encyclopedia-sized novels. Sticking the uninteresting looking red hardcover book into his duffel bag, Russell sat down at the front door to pull his work boots on. Tom joined him a moment later, opening the shoe cupboard to take out a pair of unused charcoal hiking shoes.

 

“Unwanted Christmas present?” Russell asked curiously.

 

“Abandoned hobby,” Tom corrected him, lacing up the shoes and following Russell out to his truck. He was still walking unsteadily and needed to be watched so that he didn’t suddenly collapse, but there was a bit of strength to his stride that hadn’t been there yesterday. With any luck, being out in the fresh air would lift his spirits further and relieve his sore, stiff muscles before they atrophied.

 

“I’m going to stop to buy lunch over at the deli and pick up a case of bottled water at the gas station,” Russell said as he started the truck. “Do you need anything?”

 

“Do you have any painkillers?”

 

“Do you have a headache?” Russell asked in concern.

 

“No, just general aches and pains.”

 

Russell stuck his hand into the front pocket of his duffel bag and pulled out a case of unmarked pills. “Mariel said that you can take one of these after eating, no more than three a day. She didn’t want to write you a prescription in case Dr. Feld gave her shit over it.”

 

“I’ll thank Mariel the next time I see her,” Tom said gratefully, taking one of the generic looking pills and swallowing it down with the water he had filled Russell’s tumbler with.

 

“Oh, and here’s your book.” Russell passed Tom the book as he pulled out of the driveway, and accidentally stomped down on the accelerator when Tom suddenly got all excited – in a panicked way.

 

“Where did you get this? This isn’t mine.”

 

“Are you sure? With all the books you have, it’s amazing that you can even remember which ones you’ve already read.”

 

“I know every book that I have in alphabetical order, Russ. And I’ve read them all. This is not mine. Where did you find it?”

 

“On your coffee table. Maybe it was your wife’s.”

 

“Grace was only interested in magazines. And I have never bought any books from this genre. _The Art of War_ by _Sun Tzu_? I would never read something like this.”

 

Russell looked over to see that Tom was actually fretting over the mystery book in his hands, flipping it over as if it held some hidden meaning or lethal trap. “What’s the big deal? If you’ve never read it before, that’s a good thing right?” But Tom didn’t answer, choosing to carelessly drop the book onto the floor of the car like it was contaminated or something. “Okay then,” Russell said with a sigh. “You’re going to spend the entire day staring off into space in complete and utter boredom.”

 

“Russ… are you sure that nobody entered the house last night?”

 

The serious tone with which Tom asked that question sent shivers up Russell’s spine. But he had checked all the doors and windows last night. And on his way to all those doors and windows, he had turned on just about every light in the house. There was no way an intruder could have escaped his notice because the house wasn’t big, and there were very few places to hide. “Yes, Tom. I’m pretty damn sure. But if you’re still worried when we get back tonight, I’ll check again to make you feel safer.”

 

* * *

 

Thirty-three degrees on its own was hot enough, but with the added humidity it was like being cooped up in a sauna. Russell navigated through big leafy fronds that were growing like rampant throughout the Glades, occasionally stopping to remove debris that kept getting tangled up in the long fan blades at the back of the airboat. When he wasn’t stopping to take samples of the water, or wiping the sweat off of his face, he was pushing back Tom’s plain navy blue cap to see if the brunette was still sleeping. Tom had fallen asleep in the opposite seat over an hour ago, but it hadn’t looked very comfortable with him dozing off in a hunched position, so Russell had coaxed Tom into stretching out across the seats and using his lap as a pillow. He hadn’t heard a single sound from Tom since then. Russell wasn’t too concerned about Tom’s extended nap because he had eaten a bit of a sandwich for a snack, along with a decent amount of water. Tom was still a long ways off from healing or recovering, so he would need all the sleep he could get.

 

Casually pushing the cap further back, Russell slipped his fingers between it and Tom’s forehead, beginning to stroke his hair. Tom’s face was just as hot and sweaty as Russell’s was, and his hair was plastered to his head in thick, damp clumps. But Russell didn’t mind because he just liked touching Tom, and admiring him while he slept. He looked so peaceful and content, enjoying the unbearable wet heat because it encouraged him to sleep longer.

 

Thanks to Tom turning his nose up at the only reading material available to him, Russell had had the pleasure of engaging the brunette in an interesting conversation. Before Tom had begun to feel drowsy – which could have been from exerting his energy for the first time in nearly two weeks, or a side effect of the drugs that he’d taken after breakfast – Russell had heard quite a few tall tales about Tom’s daughter Kira. Apparently Tom’s little angel was anything but. Kira seemed to get into just as much mischief as Jesse, if not more, and was never out of trouble. The only contact that Tom had had with his in-laws since the plane crash had been a two-minute telephone conversation with his sister-in-law. Or _ex-sister-in-law._ His deceased wife’s older sister had demanded that Tom take Kira off her hands as soon as he was able because nobody could handle her. If Kira wasn’t throwing a temper tantrum over the mother who she had lost, and the father who she wasn’t allowed to visit, she was flirting with older boys in the schoolyard or attempting to run away from home. She was a bit of a drama queen and spoiled, responding to nobody but her own parents.

 

Although the stories about Kira had amused Russell, the treatment that Tom had gotten from his father-in-law hadn’t. The old man seemed to think that Tom had failed in his duties as a husband by not dying alongside his wife. He had forbidden Tom from attending the funeral and cut off all communication with him, hence the sister-in-law acting as a messenger. What was worse was that Tom’s own parents had passed away years ago, so he was now without any family or emotional support. If Tom needed a shoulder to cry on, or someone to hold him up when he was feeling down, Russell would just have to be the one to provide those things for him.

 

At one point in the conversation it had looked like Tom was about to break down and cry, and that’s when Russell had swiftly changed the subject. He had occupied Tom with his plans to take Jesse down to a carnival that was passing through next week, automatically including both Tom and Kira in those plans. Then he’d given Tom a guided tour of the marshes, complete with a detailed description of the fragile ecosystem that they were passing through. That had put his mind back on his job and allowed him to get a few more tasks done, while charming his companion with everything that the Glades had to offer.

 

Once they’d reached the opposite side of the marsh, Russell roused Tom from his slumber to pass him the open water bottle that he’d just thirstily drunk from. “Come on, you need to rehydrate.”

 

Struggling to get up into a sitting position with Russell’s help, Tom took the plastic bottle and forced himself to stomach a few mouthfuls. “It’s too hot,” he complained, passing the bottle back to Russell, still half full.

  
“That’s why you need to keep drinking.” Russell shoved the bottle back at Tom, waiting for him to finish it. Once it was empty, he took the bottle and shoved it into his duffel bag. “It’s a fifteen minute walk to the next ranger station and the path is uncovered. I don’t like the idea of you out in this heat in the middle of the day, so you’re going to stay here and wait for me while I get what I need.”

 

“But you said that there are giant snakes out here. And crocodiles,” Tom protested, looking visibly upset at the prospect of being left alone with the monstrous creatures that Russell had introduced during his tour.

 

Which would be worse? Giving Tom a shotgun to protect himself with and telling him to stay put? Or dragging him along an unshielded path, under the direct scorching heat of the sun, and hoping he didn’t collapse or pass out? Russell really hadn’t thought the entire situation through. He had just imagined that he would take Tom around on the airboat, enjoy a romantic lunch with him out in the marshes, and then get him home before the mosquitoes came out in full force. He had forgotten to factor in walking to and from several other destinations that he was expected to visit before the day was up. “Do you think you can make it to the ranger station?”

 

“Can I walk slowly?”

 

Not really. Russell was on a very tight schedule, having to make up for lost time from the day before. He needed to get a million things done in half the regular time. “Sure, you can walk as slowly as you need to,” he said kindly, knowing that he was going to have to come up with a plausible excuse to explain his low productivity if someone checked up on him. He would prefer to get raked over the coals for being a _lazy bastard_ than push Tom too hard or abandon him in the middle of unfamiliar territory.

 

“Then I’d rather go with you.”

 

 _And I’d rather you stayed with me anyway._ What was it about this man that tugged at Russell’s heartstrings and made him cave at any request Tom made? “Watch your step,” Russell warned when Tom followed him to the edge of the airboat. The dock that had been there before had been swept away in the last hurricane, so Russell had to step right off and into water that was thigh-high. “Lean over to me,” he instructed, placing his hands on Tom’s waist and lifting. But the angle was too high and the muddy earth beneath his feet gave way, causing him to slip backwards. Together, they plunged into the warm, murky water, with Russell frantically grabbing hold of Tom to get his head back above it. When he’d managed to regain his footing, holding Tom tightly in his arms in relief, Russell quickly inspected him for injuries. “I’m so sorry… I didn’t mean to drop you,” he apologized. “Are you okay?”

 

“I’m fine, Russ. The water is warm.” Tom moved his hand across the surface of the water, creating small waves and ripples that he soon became fascinated with.

 

Pleased that Tom had taken such a liking to what Russell considered to be his second home, he patiently stood there with his feet planted firmly in the muck, and Tom safely up against him, waiting for the brunette to tire of the water. But rather than showing any signs of losing interest in the water, Tom seemed to become more intrigued with it. If Russell hadn’t been holding Tom back, he was pretty sure that he would have lost him to the murky clutches of the marsh. “What are you looking for?” Russell asked quietly when he noticed that Tom was staring down into the depths of the water, as if searching for something.

 

“I don’t know,” Tom replied, sounding just as curious about his actions as Russell was. After a few minutes, Tom turned back to Russell, pushed up against him in a desperate embrace, and kissed him passionately.

 

Now _this_ was worth getting fired over! Wrapping one arm around Tom’s waist, and the other behind the brunette’s head to trap him there, Russell just about devoured him he was so turned on. Being with Tom made all his other relationships seem like too much of an effort, or lacking that special spark that only Tom knew how to ignite. All the careful planning and maneuvering that he’d wasted his time and energy on with his previous lovers was not necessary with Tom. He didn’t need to think about what Tom wanted because he just _knew_. He knew how Tom liked to be touched and how he wanted to be kissed. And he didn’t have to censor himself when he was talking to Tom because his companion enjoyed the friendly bantering as much as he did the conversation. What was even better was that he didn’t have to work on building the mood before going after Tom, because the brunette was so receptive of him, or talented at seducing him.

 

“You like making out in the water?” Russell breathed by Tom’s ear between kisses, dropping both hands to Tom’s ass to begin eagerly groping him. “Hmm? What’s got you so worked up?”

 

“I need a reason for wanting to kiss you?” Tom asked as he ran his hands over Russell’s face, gazing into his eyes as if he were hypnotized, before kissing him again.

 

At the end of the kiss, Russell hotly dragged his open mouth down over Tom’s face, licking him and sucking on his skin at random intervals. “No, but you’re going to need a good reason for me to stop,” he warned as he nipped at Tom’s jaw line. “Forget our picnic. I’d rather eat you.”

 

“Russ…,” Tom groaned, dropping his hand to Russell’s crotch to begin rubbing him with his palm.

 

Russell held his breath when Tom began to stroke and squeeze him through the rough fabric of his jeans. If this was what Tom really wanted… Not wanting Tom to have any second thoughts or change his mind, Russell helped him out of the water and onto the embankment where he pulled the brunette down onto his knees. Then he placed the palm of his hand over Tom’s cargo pants, returning the intimate touch with just as much enthusiasm. “You like this, Tom?” He watched those expressive blue eyes widen for a moment, before they fluttered shut, and then Tom’s face softened with exquisite delight.

 

“ _Yes_ … Russ… I want to feel you…”

 

That could have been interpreted in two different ways, and since Russell wasn’t sure which one Tom had meant, he unzipped his jeans, before unbuttoning the brunette’s cargo pants. Letting Tom do whatever he pleased, Russell reached inside the open cargo pants to stroke Tom a few times, and then grasped him firmly in his hand. He gasped when Tom mirrored his actions, stroking him clumsily at first due to a lack of experience. “Just do what feels natural,” Russell encouraged him as he leaned forward to kiss Tom again. Their tongues entwined and their wet lips moved together as the kiss became hungrier and more intense. “I want to taste you,” Russell whispered against Tom’s lips, not looking away when Tom’s eyes opened again in widened shock. Tom might have been naïve when it came to what two men did together, but there was no way he could have misunderstood what Russell was asking for. Keeping his eyes locked with Tom’s, in case his lover wanted him to stop, Russell gently pushed Tom down to lie on his back. “There’s nobody out here but us,” he said reassuringly as he spread Tom’s legs apart so that he could crouch between them.

 

“Russ… I’ve never…,” Tom began, turned completely red, and didn’t say another word.

 

Oh really? Tom’s deceased wife – _God bless her soul_ – must have either been an extreme prude or a saint. “You’ll like it,” he promised as he took hold of Tom’s cargo pants, slowly lowering them down the brunette’s legs to toss them onto the sand nearby. Tom’s briefs soon followed, until he was lying with his bare ass in the wet sand, looking ready to be ravished. Sliding both hands under Tom’s backside, Russell lifted him up a bit as he leaned down low, between his legs. All he had to do was breathe on Tom’s sensitive erection to get the brunette gasping and twitching. Moving in further, he pressed his lips to the smooth head before sucking the length into his open mouth. Thankfully his arms had Tom’s legs trapped at his sides, otherwise he would’ve been kicked in the head when Tom moaned loudly and struggled against him. He could imagine that the sensations were quite devastating for someone who had never experienced a blowjob before, so he went slowly, giving Tom time to adjust. He wanted to make Tom feel good, to prove to him the chemistry they had together, if there was any doubt, which there probably wasn’t. But above all else, Russell wanted to taste Tom, to drive him mad with desire, and claim him as his own. Russell drew his tongue from the base of Tom’s cock to the head, licking him with long confident strokes that wrung moans, whimpers, and pleas out of his lover. He closed his lips tightly around Tom and sucked him slowly, feeling fingers weaving through his hair to pull him in closer. He kept the pace relaxed and leisurely, dragging his tongue along Tom’s sensitive skin as his wet lips glided up and down him.

 

“Russ… I can’t…” Tom whimpered, his face flushed and his voice scratchy from all the noise he’d been making.

 

 _Then come_ , Russell thought to himself with a groan as he sucked Tom a little harder. He was extremely hard himself and Tom couldn’t reach him, so Russell began to stroke himself in rhythm with the movement of his lips. When he felt the brunette’s buttocks clench in his hands, Russell sealed his lips firmly around Tom, sucking him harder until he had no choice but to come. He heard Tom’s moaning grow louder for a moment as he arched his back and came hard into Russell’s mouth, thrusting urgently into him, and then sank back into the sand in delirious wonder with his hips still twitching. Tom tasted like warm saltwater on his tongue, reminding him of the sea mixed with something more exotic. It was a flavor that Russell could definitely picture himself getting addicted to. He gently licked Tom’s softening cock as he swallowed all he had to offer, and then pulled off of him. “You were delicious,” he praised as he moved up to kiss Tom, stroking himself quicker when Tom tentatively licked at his tongue to taste what Russell had. That was all it took for Russell to lose it, coming hard in the sand between Tom’s legs. “You drive me insane,” he groaned as he pulled Tom into his arms to kiss him again and again.

 

“I love you, Russ,” Tom whispered into Russell’s ear before allowing himself to be kissed again.

 

 _Love?_ Usually that word had a habit of scaring Russell off. Because love usually meant being chained down and investing in a sure thing. Love was the end of an affair and the beginning of a very meaningful relationship. Could Tom have fallen in love with him over the course of a few days? Or perhaps the better question was, why was Russell already picturing his life with Tom in it? For whatever reason, whether it be chemistry or fate, Russell knew that what he had with Tom was no simple ill-planned fling. Did he love Tom? Was that what this burning ache in his heart was?

 

Reaching over to caress Tom’s face, Russell found his voice producing the words that his heart was already sure of. “You’re right, Tom. Us being together has to be fate. Because I love you, too.”    


	10. Chapter 10

**Day 10 – Pre-contact**

 

Three cups of coffee. There was a hell of a lot of caffeine in that amount of coffee, probably around 500-600 milligrams worth. But even with all that caffeine surging through his veins, Russell still felt groggy. He was usually fine with the one cup in the morning because he had sufficient vitality to get him going even on the days that he went without. But last night had left him feeling trashed, and bestowed him with a bitching headache, leaving him with no choice but to turn to an unnatural source of energy to jumpstart the day.

 

“Tom.” Russell knelt down on the section of carpeting in the bedroom that was passing off as their sleeping area, pulled back on the comforter that the brunette was hiding under, and held a steaming mug of chamomile tea out for him. Since Tom was still taking various drugs with all three daily meals, which he had difficulty finishing, Mariel had recommended that he steer clear of coffee and caffeine for a while. That way they could limit how many things might potentially upset his stomach. At first there was no reaction to the tea as Tom tried to cling to whatever remnants of sleep that he could. “There’s a bowl of fresh strawberries and some scrambled eggs with toast waiting for you in the kitchen.” He affectionately ruffled Tom’s hair to get him moving, and then slid his hand down the brunette’s face in a gentle caress.

 

“Thanks, Russ,” Tom murmured, pulling the comforter back over his head. “I’ll get it later,” came the muffled promise as soon as Russell’s lover had vanished from sight.

 

“You’re not going to get any kisses later,” Russell threatened, still kneeling there with what smelled like an enticing mixture of herbs in his right hand, while he chased after Tom underneath the comforter with his left. Tom caught his hand before he could catch Tom, and then he felt warm lips pressing to the center of his palm. A shiver ran up Russell’s spine at the contact and he couldn’t help but smirk. As horrible a night as Tom had had yesterday, he still managed to surprise Russell with how sweet and sensual he was – if not a bit naïve and awkward, as their shared shower had drawn attention to last night. “Are you going to get up, or do I have to drink your tea for you, too?”

 

Tom reappeared and blinked sleepily up at Russell, before struggling up into a sitting position and accepting the hot beverage. His normally wavy hair was an absolute disaster, sticking up here and there, making him look like a wild man. An incredibly sexy wild man. Russell enjoyed running his fingers through Tom’s hair because it was thick and soft, and amusingly blond when held up to the light. After Tom had brushed it into submission, it wasn’t so much fun to play with, although that didn’t stop Russell from trying. “What time is it?”

 

“Nearly ten.”

 

“Ten?!” Tom nearly choked on the hot tea as he shot Russell a look of disbelief. “Are you going to get fired?”

 

“Not on a Sunday,” Russell replied with a touch of humor. Poor Tom had no idea what day of the week it was, and his internal clock was still out of whack because he hadn’t been woken by the birds chirping around 5:45am, nor had he stirred an hour ago when Russell had flooded the house with the delicious aroma of oily sausages and fried buttery eggs. Although Tom would never find any evidence of those sausages because they were too greasy for his stomach to handle so early in his recovery. Maybe Tom needed a few more days to get his appetite functioning properly again, but Russell’s super fast metabolism refused to be affected by his lover’s finicky eating habits. Russell had lain in bed for over an hour before his stomach had begun to groan and rumble, forcing him to get up and prepare the food that he’d bought at the supermarket yesterday. “Do you need help getting up?”

 

“Can you hold this for a second?” As soon as Russell had the mug safely back in his hand, Tom pushed himself up off of the floor, swayed a bit, and then stood up unassisted.

 

Russell watched Tom for a moment, thinking that he looked too damn cute in those cornflower-blue cotton pajamas of his. They looked a lot classier than the fraying grey t-shirt and holey track pants that Russell had worn to bed last night. He usually opted to sleep either in the nude or in nothing but a pair of boxer-briefs, but he hadn’t wanted any more carpet burns on his legs so he’d overdressed in order to avoid them. “I hate to ask this, but do you think that maybe we can sleep on the bed tonight? You shouldn’t be on the floor when you’re all bruised and battered, and my back kills from all that heavy lifting…”

 

“Okay, Russ,” Tom agreed easily, smiling at him with those shining blue eyes of his. “If you don’t mind helping me change the sheets?”

 

“Not at all.” Russell would voluntarily change the mattress itself if it guaranteed that he wouldn’t have to spend another night rolling around on the floor. Sleeping on the floor was bad enough, but holding onto Tom while he screamed and fought imaginary demons made it many times more uncomfortable than it actually was. He’d called Mariel yesterday to ask her about the night terrors, but she’d been in surgery all day and had yet to get back to him. Russell wanted to know how long Tom would continue to experience the night terrors, and whether they were being caused by the plane crash itself or Dr. Feld’s abusive treatment. If it was as a result of the latter… Dr. Feld would soon be in for a world of pain.

 

“Are there sausages, too?” Tom asked on the way to the kitchen.

 

So much for hiding his tracks! Russell had opened the kitchen window in order to air out the room after his oily breakfast, but Tom seemed to have very sensitive senses because he could still detect them with his keen nose. “Uh… there were sausages for _my_ breakfast, but you’re cut off from caffeine, oily foods, and anything spicy until you’re feeling better.”

 

“What about bacon?”

 

“That falls under the _oily foods_ category.”

 

“Not if you remove the oil with a paper towel.”

 

When they reached the kitchen, Russell’s cell phone began to ring, so he playfully patted Tom on the ass and steered him towards the table. “It’s Mariel. Go eat your breakfast. I’ll be in the living room if you need me.” He left Tom to his healthy breakfast and went into the living room to take the call. “Hey Mariel! You finally found the time to get back to me,” he half-joked, going over to the front window to open the drapes.

 

_“Sorry about that, I got sidetracked after work last night. When I remembered to call you back, it was after midnight… I didn’t want to disturb you so late.”_

More like she didn’t want to risk interrupting whatever her perverted mind had imagined he was doing with Tom around that hour. Not that she would have been wrong. But they had finished fooling around sometime before 11pm and had gone to bed shortly afterwards. And not long after that, the night terrors had taken over Tom’s sleep, along with the accusation that _something_ was in the house again. “Yeah, don’t worry about it.”

 

_“How is Tom holding up?”_

“Maybe you can tell me, but first things first… I need you to go through Tom’s personal effects to look for his wedding ring. It would be great if you could bring it over sometime this afternoon. He got all worked up because he thought that he’d lost it,” Russell laughed uneasily, trying not to reveal to Mariel just how upset Tom had gotten over the missing ring.

 

 _“His personal effects…?”_ Mariel trailed off and hesitated before continuing. _“That was one of the odd things about his rescue, Russell. Tom wasn’t wearing any identifying accessories of any kind when he was brought in. No watch, no ring, no bracelet… nothing.”_

“That can’t be right. He claims that he was wearing the ring when he boarded the plane. Can you at least get the bag that his stuff was put into and make sure that it’s still properly sealed? You never know with hospital staff nowadays.”

 

_“I’m going to ignore that really offensive remark that you just made about my coworkers and tell you one more time. There is no bag because there was nothing to put in it.”_

Hissing through his teeth in frustration, Russell knocked the stubborn drapes out of his way and glared out the… _open window?_ Why was that window still open? He was pretty damn sure that he’d closed it last night so that Tom wouldn’t be disturbed by the hissing and snarling of raccoons fighting on the front lawn. “How about his clothing? Maybe the ring is inside a pocket or something.” When Russell moved closer to the window to shut it again, his bare foot stepped on something grainy that stuck to his skin. _What the hell?_ There was a warm area rug in the center of the living room where the sofa, TV, and coffee table were, but the rest of the room was nothing but exposed, low quality hardwood flooring. That included the area by the window that was littered with wet sand. But Russell had been in this exact same spot yesterday, also barefoot, when he had closed and locked the window. There hadn’t been any sand on the floor at that time.

 

_“Russell, you’re not listening. Nothing means nothing. Tom was completely naked when he was pulled from the water.”_

Russell felt like he’d just gotten whiplash when that last statement yanked him violently back into the conversation. “What the hell are you talking about? He was in a plane crash, not abducted by aliens. How could he have been completely naked?!” What kind of indignity was it to be seen by so many rescuers without a shred of clothing to cover yourself with?! Russell didn’t want to imagine anyone other than himself seeing Tom in that state because it made him feel possessive as hell.

 

_“That was my initial reaction as well, but it doesn’t change the fact that there wasn’t a single article of clothing or any piece of jewelry to take off of him before he went into surgery.”_

Lowering his voice so that Tom wouldn’t overhear him, Russell let loose a string of accusations that would have earned him a slap in the face had Mariel been in front of him to hear them. “Maybe that old fucker Feld’s interest in Tom was a lot more unprofessional than either of us realized! Was he at the rescue site? Maybe he got to Tom before anyone else did and--.”

 

_“Are you seriously suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?!”_

“Why the hell not? Tom’s young, attractive… and that Feld is an ugly old abusive piece of shit! Maybe that’s the reason why Tom’s having these god-awful night terrors.”

 

_“I’m not going to stand up for the man after what he did, but Dr. Feld was at the hospital with me at the time of Tom’s rescue. He couldn’t have done what you’re implying. As for his night terrors, perhaps he should be evaluated by a professional to determine the cause of them. He’s scheduled for grief counseling on Tuesday if you can take him downtown for the appointment.”_

“Mariel, what the hell happened to his clothing? When I was helping with the cleanup, I came across many dead bodies… or what was left of them. And plane crash or not, they were all clothed, unless they were involved in the fire that engulfed the fuselage. But most of them, like Tom, were thrown free of the wreckage before it burst into flames.”

 

_“It’s bizarre, but I honestly can’t answer your question because I have no idea of what could have happened to his clothing. Or his ring.”_

There was a long, uncomfortable pause in the conversation while Russell stewed in his anger. Mariel held on, not wanting to say anything that would set him off again, but not too eager to hang up just yet. “What?”

 

 _“What?”_ Mariel repeated, reacting to the sarcasm in Russell’s tone.

 

“Whatever it is that you obviously want to say, which isn’t related to Tom, just go ahead and say it. Do you want more money in child support, or have you changed your mind about the alimony payments?” Russell seriously hoped that his ex-wife wasn’t going to turn around and ask for the alimony because he couldn’t afford it on his salary. Besides, he had already given her the house, which she’d requested in lieu of the financial support. What else was she expecting from him? He needed the rest of his money to support Tom until he could get back on his feet, especially after he’d already accepted his lover’s invitation to move in with him last night.

 

_“No, it’s nothing like that. It’s just that… well, you know that guy that I’ve been seeing? Things are getting a bit serious… and we’ve been talking about oh, this and that … Turns out, he absolutely loves children, and he expressed an interest in meeting Jesse… and out of respect for you, he brought up the idea of going out to dinner together so you can meet him before I introduce him to our son.”_

“Hold on a minute--.”

 

_“He’s a real gentleman, Russell. That’s why he proposed this meeting in the first place. I mentioned that you were involved with Tom and he insisted that you bring him along. It would be good for Tom to get out for the night to be with other people. It’ll just be the four of us down at The Royal Steakhouse. Kind of like a double date.”_

The Royal Steakhouse? _Why doesn’t the pompous ass just come right out and call me a poor loser and get it over with?_ Even if Russell could afford to pay for a meal at the only four-star restaurant in Homestead, he wouldn’t want to do so while being forced to play nice with his ex-wife’s new boy toy. Not that he cared who Mariel chose to have a relationship with. No, Russell was only concerned about the effect that it would have on their young, and highly impressionable, son. “I just wasted my last pay check on the fees for our divorce lawyer, Mariel. I don’t have another two-hundred dollars to spare for overpriced beef.” Not that Tom wouldn’t be worth maxing out his credit card for.

 

_“He’s paying.”_

 

“Then he must have something to hide.”

 

_“Russell!”_

“What man offers to treat the ex-husband _and_ the ex-husband’s boyfriend to a full course meal without having an ulterior motive?”

 

“ _I’m sick of listening to you judge me and the man that I’m seeing,”_ Mariel fumed on the other end. _“You know I could do the same to you and Tom, but I won’t because I don’t have your suspicious nature. So, here’s what’s going to happen. We’re going to be at The Royal Steakhouse – tonight – at 5:30pm. We’ve reserved a table for four in case you do decide to show up. If you don’t… well, that’s your problem. Because one way or the other, we’ll be taking Jesse to Disney World next weekend. With or without your approval.”_

“Jesse’s _my_ son, too! You can’t just--.” When the line went dead, Russell swore and raised his arm to whip his cell phone at the wall.

 

“Russell?”

 

Russell froze in the middle of his violent action, lowered his arm, and turned to Tom. The brunette was gripping his own cell phone in his hand and looked really upset. “What’s wrong?”

 

“I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to interrupt your conversation.”

 

“Oh, believe me, it’s definitely over. What do you need?”

 

Tom stood there for a moment, struggling to get the words out, before he finally managed to say, “Kira called me. She said that my in-laws are having the funeral in two hours… Six hours earlier than it was originally scheduled for. I don’t know what to do, Russ.” He helplessly raised his head to Russell and looked imploringly at him with his tear-filled blue eyes.

 

At least this was one problem that Russell had an immediate answer for. “Sure you do. Go take a shower and I’ll find you something to wear.”

 

“But…”

 

“I’ll drive you there and stay close the whole time. She was your wife, Tom. They can’t ban you from her funeral. That’s just cruel and despicable. Do you need me to rush order some flowers?”

 

“I ordered them last night on the internet. They should be there by now.”

 

“Then all you need to do is get ready. If your ex-father-in-law has a problem with you being there, I’ll handle him.”

 

“Russ…” Tom attempted to smile, which just made him look even sadder, and stepped closer to hug Russell tightly. “Thank you.”

 

Russell held Tom a little tighter than necessary, pressing his face into the brunette’s wayward hair so that he could inhale his scent. Despite the pleasant aroma of the fruity shampoo Tom had washed his hair with last night, Russell could still detect the faint scent of the water from the Glades on him, like it smelled after it had freshly rained – pure, sweet, and alive. “Tom, can I ask you a question?” Russell asked carefully, not knowing if Tom was ready to discuss his stay in the hospital, but needing to get this one paranoid fear off of his chest.

 

“Okay.”

 

“Were you conscious when you were pulled from the water?” Russell didn’t need to see Tom’s face to know that that question was very upsetting for him. He could feel the tension in the slender body in his arms, as well as hear the quickening of Tom’s breathing as he struggled to answer the question.

 

“Briefly…,” was all Tom responded with.

 

There was no delicate way of asking the next question so Russell just went and put it out there. “Do you have any idea why you were naked when you were found?”

 

Tom immediately pushed away from Russell with his face red and his eyes wide with shock. “What are you talking about?”

 

 _Stupid idiot,_ Russell inwardly cursed himself, not having anticipated this particular reaction. Tom hadn’t known about his missing clothes, and he still expected his ring to turn up somewhere, so he obviously had no clue what had happened to what he’d been wearing at the time of the crash. Should he elaborate on the details or keep them to himself? Which would be less upsetting for Tom? His lover had to attend a funeral in two hours, and he couldn’t do so if he was shamefully dwelling on the fact that he’d been fully exposed to a group of strange men while he’d been unconscious. Or that his wedding ring was nowhere to be found, and would likely forever stay that way. Making his decision, Russell reached for Tom again and soothed him with more hugs and kisses. “Never mind. Your clothing probably caught on the wreckage from the plane.”

 

“But you said _naked_ ,” Tom said fearfully.

 

“Forget what I said. You’re all cold again. Come and take a shower with me.” Russell nudged Tom in the direction of the washroom, intent on doing whatever was necessary to take his lover’s mind off of the lingering trauma of that plane crash.

 

* * *

 

 

A few hours later, Tom sat patiently in the passenger’s seat of Russell’s jeep and eyed the fancy looking restaurant that they’d parked in front of. The clock on the radio read _5:35_ , which would make them fashionably late _if_ Russell decided that he wanted to get out of the vehicle in order to attend the dinner that they’d been invited to. It wasn’t Tom’s place to influence Russell one way or the other, so he just sat there quietly, wondering if his lover would be turned away at the door by a _no t-shirts_ policy if they did try to go inside.

 

Tom didn’t mind waiting around for a while because he was feeling exhausted and emotionally drained after the funeral that he’d just attended. Perhaps it had been because of Russell’s intimidating presence, but whatever the reason, no one had attempted to eject Tom from the funeral proceedings. Although he had approached the closed coffin to place a red rose on it and say his final goodbyes before it had been lowered into the ground, he hadn’t stepped forward to offer a eulogy. It had taken all his energy to just keep standing and listen to his ex-father-in-law’s eulogy, which had depicted Grace as an angelic saint whose first mistake in life had been moving to Homestead. Grace had come from a well-off family from a highly populated area of California and, although there had been no mention of it in the eulogy, she had moved to Homestead – alone – to escape her domineering father’s control. But the old man hadn’t made it sound that way. No, he had gone out of his way to paint the picture of an obedient daughter who had made poor choices after college and ended up in a deadbeat town like Homestead, which had ultimately led to her unfortunate death. If only she had stayed in California and married Jason Wells, her high school sweetheart… And, unfortunately for Tom, Jason had also been invited to the funeral. Russell had said that it was in poor taste, and Tom had completely agreed, but when Jason had approached him directly to offer his condolences, Tom had changed his mind.

 

 _“Don’t let the old bastard get to you,”_ Jason – a tall blonde with football shoulders and a crooked smile – had said as he clapped Tom on the shoulder. _“Grace and I were done before college started thanks to that meddling idiot. He wouldn’t have been satisfied unless Grace had married someone rich like Bill Gates.”_ Tom hadn’t known what to say to that, so he had just attempted to smile to show his appreciation. _“Grace and I kept in touch for a while, you know. She said nothing but good things about you. It’s a miracle that you survived that crash… But I guess that it was by some divine intervention because someone needs to raise Kira, and I’m sure that you don’t want that jerk doing it for you.”_

No. Tom most certainly did not want his deceased wife’s tyrant of a father ruining Kira’s childhood. Kira hadn’t attended the funeral because she’d locked herself in the washroom at her aunt’s house and refused to come out when her grandparents had arrived to collect her. They kept complaining that it was because of her willfulness – which she no doubt got from her father – but Tom knew better. Kira disliked her grandfather’s abrupt way of ordering her around, and she felt no connection with the grandmother that let him get away with it. Tom had been invited – _strongly urged_ – to pick Kira up by the end of the day tomorrow. Before someone suffered a nervous breakdown. Thanks to Russell, Tom was pretty confident that he would be able to handle Kira with an extra set of eyes around the house. Russell had offered to take them both around the Glades while he worked, which would probably endanger his job if he got caught, but Tom was not in any position to refuse such a generous offer. He still felt unsteady on his feet and occasionally spaced out when he remembered bits and pieces of the plane crash. And he wasn’t sleeping well at all. Without Russell’s assistance, he was positive that he would have been taken back to the hospital against his will, and he would much rather pass out in the shower than have to face Dr. Feld again.

 

“Are you okay?” Russell asked quietly, reaching over to place his hand over Tom’s.

 

“I’m just happy that so many of Grace’s friends made it to…” For some reason, Tom just couldn’t get the word _funeral_ out of his mouth. “She would have been pleased…”

 

“She sounded like a really classy lady,” Russell commented as he grasped Tom’s hand tightly.

 

“And you’re a very honorable man,” Tom complimented his lover, hoping that Russell would take the hint and change the subject. Because Tom had already bade his wife farewell in the funeral plot on the edge of town that she was buried in. While it was true that he did feel a heavy sorrow and emptiness over the loss, it was very faint in comparison to how strongly he felt for Russell. _This_ was the path that he was supposed to be on now, and Russell was the man that he was intended to be with. Whenever Tom tried to remember the life that he had led with his wife, he found his thoughts searching out Russell again. As sad or as lost as he was feeling, all he had to do was look into Russell’s gentle brown eyes to see his love reciprocated in order to regain his outlook on life. The strong, handsome park ranger had agreed to move in with him – permanently – which expressed how devoted he was to their relationship. Tom could no longer imagine falling asleep without those powerful arms wrapped around him, or waking up and not feeling that bristly beard scratching over his skin as he was kissed over and over again with such warmth and affection.

 

“I’m honorable, am I?” By the sounds of it, Russell was delightfully amused to be referred to like a gallant knight from a storybook. “I doubt that what I did yesterday afternoon was very honorable.”

 

Tom found himself blushing before he could control his reaction to the memory of how Russell had pleasured him in the wet sand yesterday. “That’s not what I meant,” he said in embarrassment.

 

“I know. I just wanted to see you blush.” Russell leaned over, kissed Tom on the cheek, and then squeezed his hand encouragingly. “Let’s get this over with so we can go home and do more honorable things together.”

 

Russell could be a scoundrel when he wanted to be, but Tom enjoyed being teased all the same. “You didn’t have anything a little more _mature_ that you could have worn?” It wasn’t so much that Tom minded Russell wearing an old dusty blazer over his navy blue t-shirt, which he had on with a pair of black jeans. He was just so sure that Russell would not get past the man standing at the front entrance if he looked like he had just come from the used clothing shop. Tom, on the other hand, had changed into a pair of dark brown slacks, and a dressy white shirt after the funeral, matching the outfit with a pair of brown leather shoes. Russell had claimed that he didn’t even own a pair of dressed shoes, choosing to wear black sneakers instead. They weren’t the same size so, unfortunately, Russell hadn’t been able to borrow anything of Tom’s.

 

“You know where I work. And I’m not into fashion, so if Romeo has a problem with what I’m wearing, he can kiss my ass.”

 

When Russell draped an arm around his shoulders and pulled him in close, Tom smiled and let himself be led up to the entrance like a real date. Russell may have been clueless about how to appear presentable and civilized when in polite company, but his aggressively romantic nature more than made up for it.

 

On the outside, The Royal Steakhouse was made up to look like a modern log cabin with its slanted roof, wooden log paneling, and quaint wooden fencing that traveled around the perimeter of the restaurant. But the inside was richly furnished and posh, completely contradicting the old-fashioned exterior that had been designed to make customers associate the building with a cattle ranch. And where there was cattle, there was beef.

 

Amazingly, Russell got past the man at the front entrance when he mentioned their reservation. And a second man smartly dressed in a black suit and tie came over to take them to their table.

 

“Doesn’t really feel like a steakhouse,” Russell muttered under his breath as they were led into the dimly lit dining room where classical music could be heard playing faintly in the background.

 

“It smells like one,” Tom whispered back, mindful that the waiter didn’t overhear their conversation because he didn’t want to appear rude. “Is it really so terrible that Mariel’s boyfriend offered to treat us to dinner tonight? I’ve never had a black angus steak before…” And he’d never been in a restaurant with dazzling sky-high chandeliers and red velvet seating before either. Judging by the way Russell was pointedly trying _not_ to gawk at the expensive furnishings, this was most likely his first time in such an establishment, too.

 

“I don’t know why you’re so excited. You won’t be able to eat more than a few bites anyhow.”

 

“I can take the rest to go.”

 

Russell snickered, which caused the waiter to glance back over his shoulder in disgust. The waiter looked like he’d just graduated from high school because he was young and full of energy, but the look that he gave Russell and Tom was filled with nothing but loathing. When he turned back around, Russell hugged Tom closer and kept up the light banter. “This place doesn’t do takeout. If you leave something on your plate, it won’t be coming home with you. But I wouldn’t worry too much about that. Whatever you don’t eat, _I will._ ”

 

But Tom was not so easily fooled by Russell’s casual attempt to brush off the look that they’d just been given. “Why did he look at us like that? Have you gotten into an altercation with him before?”

 

For a moment, Russell said nothing, but then he lowered his voice and spoke to Tom in quite an incredulous tone. “Come off it, Tom. You didn’t honestly think that two men could walk into a place like this, acting all lovey dovey with each other, and not attract a few dirty looks? We’re lucky they didn’t tell us to fuck off at the front entrance.”

 

Well, that was an incredibly vulgar way of putting it! Actually, Tom couldn’t see anything wrong with two men who were in love with each other walking into any given establishment with the expectation of being served kindly and fairly. What right did one human being have to judge another? Everyone deserved the right to exist unharassed, regardless of their sexual orientation, or any other discriminating bias. “How could I have been so foolish not to expect such a reaction?” Tom muttered sarcastically, wondering if he could enjoy his meal while being served with nothing but dirty looks. What was so wrong with his relationship with Russell that it made other men – like the bartender who was now elbowing a male customer at the bar and sneering in their direction – so terribly hostile? Although a small part of Tom somehow understood why he was being treated with such revulsion – the old part of him that had become dormant after the plane crash – he still could not get past how unacceptable such an archaic attitude should be in today’s society. If he were in charge of things…

 

Obviously missing the sarcasm in Tom’s voice, Russell whispered into his ear, distracting his train of thoughts. “They can give me silver cutlery to eat with and dump shaved gold on top of my ice cream for all I care. But the most gorgeous thing in here is still going to be you.”

 

If those words had come out of anyone else’s mouth, they may have sounded pathetic and cliché. But Russell sincerely meant every flattering word that he directed Tom’s way, which made Tom’s heart swoon and his body long for his dark haired lover with an ever increasing urgency. How was it possible to love another person as intensely as he loved Russell? Tom didn’t know how to put his feelings into words, but he likened his attachment to Russell to being tethered to a helicopter, hovering 10,000 feet above the ocean. If the rope connecting him to Russell were ever to be severed, Tom felt like he would surely plunge to his death. “Russ…”

 

“I know,” was all Russell said. But he responded automatically, as if he had sensed what it was that Tom had wanted to say, which was just a tad strange.

 

Tom was so enthralled with Russell that he was barely able to regain his composure by the time they reached the elegant table situated in the far back corner of the restaurant. The table was an oval shape, covered with a fine ivory tablecloth on which meticulously polished silverware was set down by every shiny appetizer plate. Someone had already ordered drinks because a tall sparkling glass of champagne stood to the right hand side of every place setting. All four high backed chairs were made of a dark mahogany wood, and two of them were pushed back a ways to accommodate the man and woman sitting on them. From a distance, Tom could see the unmistakable blond gleam of Mariel’s short ponytail as she leaned forward to take a sip from the water glass that had been left in front of her. And beside her…

 

All of a sudden, Tom felt a tightness in his chest that made it difficult to think and breathe. The alien sensation of something traveling down his spine caused him to first shiver, and then to tremble as that bizarre energy electrified his nerve endings. His heart was beating too fast, his breathing too quick and shallow, and his fingers and toes were tingling in reaction to an energy source that he didn’t understand. And by some odd compulsion, he found himself pulling against the arm around his waist as he tried to reverse directions in order to escape that deadly charge.

 

“Tom?” Russell said in confusion, not knowing if Tom had perhaps begun to feel sick or was feeling too nervous to approach the table.

 

Having overheard Tom’s name being called out, Mariel turned around and stood up in order to greet them. And a half second before she could get to her feet, her male companion had already leisurely gotten to his, pushing back his chair and turning to feast his eyes on Tom as if that’s what he’d been waiting to do all along. He had a sharp face with a distinct jaw line, thick curly dark hair, and slate blue eyes. And when he spoke, his commanding British accent reverberated inside of Tom in a very negative way. Tom knew this voice. He’d heard it commanding Dr. Feld as a general orders around one of his lowly lieutenants. He was familiar with the _presence_ of this man, just as he was absolutely certain that this was the man who was responsible for the abuse and torment that he had suffered at the hospital. This was the monster who had ordered Dr. Feld to continue subjecting him to all those unnecessary tests, as well as demanded that Russell – who he considered to be _uneducated_ and _brainless_ , according to his own degrading words – be kept away from him. This man had touched his face back at the hospital, when he’d felt his consciousness slipping away after he’d been sedated. And in that moment of brief registered contact, Tom had understood exactly what it was that this man wanted. It was only now that everything came back to him in repressed memories, creating a sickening nausea in the pit of his stomach.

 

“You’re quite the miracle, I hear, _Tom_ ,” the man was saying, keeping his stone-cold gaze riveted on Tom, preventing him from looking away. Judging by his expression, he seemed to know _exactly_ what Tom was thinking, but he kept his voice neutral and pleasant, as if daring Tom to have the gall to out him for the twisted bastard that he was. “Surviving first a plane crash and then twenty-four hours out in the Glades by yourself. Only a true _survivor_ would have been capable of such a feat.”

 

Tom opened his mouth to speak but no words would come out. The man was stretching out his hand in a proffered gesture of greeting, and Russell was leaning forward to take it. Why wasn’t Russell able to sense the danger that this man posed to both him and Mariel, as well as his young son? What was Mariel doing in the company of such a man? Were they being willfully blind? How was it that Tom was the only one present who was able to detect the malice in this man’s tone and the hatred in his eyes?

 

“Eli Szura,” the man introduced himself briefly, shaking Russell’s hand somewhat overenthusiastically.

 

“Russell Varon,” Russell returned the lack of sentiment, keeping the contact short and unemotional, but his grip steely and challenging. But all Russell saw in front of him was a man who was vying for the right to act as a father figure to his son. That was the only reason why Russell was on edge because he suspected nothing else.

 

Eli Szura was the man responsible for keeping Tom drugged and docile for days on end in that private hospital room that had felt like a cold and lonely prison. All those tiring medical exams, blood samples, and that extremely painful biopsy were a result of this man’s orders. This horribly cruel man who was looking at him as if he were nothing but a lab specimen that needed to be beaten into submission. Tom didn’t know how he knew, but he could _feel_ Szura’s animosity towards him. Just like he had felt it last night when he’d woken up feeling terrified and confused, before Russell had chased those feelings away with his warm embrace and loving kisses. Szura was the _something_ that he had referred to when he’d sensed an intruder in the house. That strange book – _The Art of War –_ that Russell had found on the coffee table… and the cold fingers that he’d felt graze his lips while he’d been sleeping last night… Tom knew without a doubt that it all came back to Eli Szura.

 

“Tom? What is it? Are you okay?”

 

Tom wanted to answer Russell – no, he wanted to _run_ , to get the hell out of there and never look back. But his vision was narrowing and his ears thundering with the sound of his own rampant heartbeat. The sensation slammed into him even harder when Szura came closer, barking out orders for someone to get him a glass of water and to bring a chair over. And then Tom was crumpling to the ground, the only thing stopping him from falling over completely being Russell’s powerful embrace, the park ranger’s scent more potent now that he was worked up into a panic. _Don’t let him touch me, Russell,_ he wanted to plead, terrified that that was exactly what Szura planned on doing. _Please don’t let him take me from you._

 

“Tom!”

 

The last conscious thought that Tom could remember before he passed out was how Russell held him so closely that Szura couldn’t have touched him even if he had wanted to.


	11. Chapter 11

**Day 10: Dining with the devil  
**

Numerous times throughout their marriage, Mariel had accused Russell of being too insensitive and tactless, and a few of those times had been in a public setting not unlike the one that Russell now found himself in. The only difference being was that this time it was Eli Szura’s credit card on the line – not Russell’s – should the dinner turn out badly. Russell had always had a difficult time reading Mariel and interpreting what it was that she wanted him to say or do in order to make her happy. Or keep the peace, which basically amounted to the same thing. They had met at a point in Russell’s life where everything had been positive, and every possible avenue in the future filled with hope and adventure. The unbalanced weight of the adventurous part had thrown them into a whirlwind romance that had been hot and exhilarating, but had resulted in an unexpected pregnancy and a shotgun marriage. While neither of them could ever imagine life without their beloved son in it, Jesse just hadn’t been reason enough for them to stay together in a marriage that had run out of both love and patience in the end.

 

With Tom, things could not have been more dramatically opposed to what Russell was used to dealing with in his romantic life. Russell _knew_ what Tom wanted to hear, just as he also knew what his lover physically needed. While in Tom’s presence, Russell could not have been more sensitive and tactful, always aware of what was required of him to keep the atmosphere between them loving and relaxed. And the passion they shared was simultaneously explosive and contained – hot enough to fuel Russell’s desire to indulge himself whenever they were alone together, but partially suppressed due to Tom’s injuries, which left plenty more energy for fantasizing about what was to come. This was not a relationship that Russell saw fizzling out anytime soon. If anything, the more time Russell spent with Tom, the more he realized that this relationship was not something that he could ever picture himself letting go of.

 

“If you aren’t feeling well, you don’t have to eat it,” Russell said in a hushed tone as he leaned in close to Tom who sat on his right, making sure that he kept his voice too low for the army general on his left to pick up.

 

Tom lifted his gaze briefly from the ornamentally arranged slab of juicy beef resting on a row of grilled asparagus in the center of his plate, and acknowledged Russell with a weak smile. Without so much as glancing in Szura’s general direction, Tom lowered his knife and fork, giving up the pretense of carefully sawing through the black angus beef in favor of eyeing the black iPhone that Russell had set on the table between them.

 

“What’s wrong?” Russell placed his hand on top of Tom’s and waited for the brunette to respond to him. Although Russell had already taken a few bites of his steak, the flavorful meal could not impress him when his mind was occupied with the overwhelming concern for his lover’s state of health. Sure, Russell had known that Tom was nowhere near recovered, either mentally or physically, but he hadn’t foreseen him collapsing in the middle of the restaurant for no apparent reason. Tom had only been unconscious for two or three minutes, but it had felt like an eternity to Russell, and when the brunette had come to he had gripped Russell’s arm in silent, abject terror. Russell hadn’t known how to react to Tom’s behavior, wondering if it was somehow connected to his night terrors or the trauma of his accident. Something about the unspoken plea in Tom’s expressive blue eyes kept Russell from asking about it out loud, forcing himself to push it aside until they could get through the dinner. Besides, he already had his hands full with fielding Szura’s prying questions and unsolicited advice in how Tom should be cared for.

 

“My stomach is unsettled,” Tom replied simply, but in an unconvincing tone that let Russell know that he was not being entirely truthful.

 

“Did the attending physician give you a list of foods that you should avoid for the time being?” Szura inquired casually from the other end of the table, indicating that he hadn’t had any trouble overhearing what was supposed to have been a private exchange between the two men. Not waiting for a response, he picked up his glass to wash down another mouthful of steak with some more of that expensive red wine that Russell had been competitively drinking for the past twenty minutes. The waiter was either incredibly keen, or had nothing better to do with his time, because every time Russell or Szura came close to emptying their glass, the young man rushed over to refill it. “Perhaps you should contact the hospital to inform them of your waning appetite.”

 

At the mention of the hospital, Tom paled and looked to Russell for help. Inwardly, Russell cringed and felt his stomach lurch at the angry sensation of adrenaline rushing through his system. It took a heck of a lot of self restraint for him to look Szura straight in the eyes and say calmly, “This is what? Only the _fifth time_ that you have mentioned the hospital during this conversation, when Tom made it clear to you that he didn’t want to discuss it.”

 

“Did he?” Szura replied smoothly as he chewed his way through another chunk of steak. “Forgive me for my confusion, but Tom hasn’t actually said anything to me this entire time. It would seem that you enjoy taking the liberty of speaking on behalf of your boyfriend.”

 

A lot more effort was required this time to ignore Szura’s obvious attempt to goad Russell into a battle of wits. “In case you haven’t noticed, my boyfriend is recovering from a plane crash.”   His tone was loaded with sarcasm as he lifted his glass to his lips and finished off what could have been his fourth or fifth full glass of wine. He would most likely need another two or three to get through the rest of this uncomfortable dinner charade. “Try showing a bit of sensitivity.”

 

“ _Russell_ ,” Mariel hissed in warning from where she sat uncomfortably close to Szura. “I think that you’ve had enough wine tonight.” And before Russell could retaliate with an observation of his own, she turned to Szura and rephrased her comment. “Eli, we don’t have a designated driver.”

 

“Sorry about that, dear,” Szura apologized smoothly. “We can share a cab on the way home.”

 

“So, it’s okay for you to have two glasses of wine and half a glass of champagne, but I get into shit for matching old Eli here with the alcohol consumption,” Russell commented in Mariel’s general direction. “And thanks Eli, but no thanks. I can get my own cab.”

 

Tom squirmed uncomfortably in his chair and tried to ignore what was sounding a lot like a confrontation waiting to happen. Russell didn’t think that he needed to explain himself to his newfound companion because Tom’s reluctance to engage Szura in conversation spoke volumes of how much he didn’t like him. It was funny, really, because Tom had tried to reason with Russell ahead of time by telling him to remain open-minded for the sake of keeping a non-antagonistic dialogue with his ex-wife. But then, for some bizarre, unknown reason, Tom had been the one to react to the sight of Szura as if he had just been introduced to the plague.

 

“I think that you should be a lot politer to Eli considering all he has done for us,” Mariel reprimanded Russell harshly.

 

“My taxes have already covered whatever it was that he’s done for us,” Russell said with a snicker. He considered himself to be a well-connected man and had a few acquaintances that had served in the military, as well as one current park ranger who had spent a few tours-of-duty in the Middle East, so he had nothing but the utmost respect for the people who fought for his country. But none of them possessed Szura’s hugely inflated ego and barely contained self-importance, or his overbearing need to inflict his opinion on everyone else. Why the hell couldn’t Mariel see Szura for the jerk that he was? Maybe dating so high up in the food chain had clouded her better judgment.

 

“You have no idea,” Mariel began, only to be mock-pacified by Szura in a half-assed attempt to quiet her.

 

“Let it rest, Mariel. There’s no need to escalate things further,” Szura said in an obviously fake piteous tone.

 

“I’m not going to let it rest,” Mariel insisted. “Not when Russell thinks that he knows everything in that hostile mind of his.”

 

“ _I’m_ the hostile one?” Russell just about choked on his asparagus over that line. “Mariel, you _know_ how uncomfortable Tom is on the topic of hospitals, and yet you’ve done nothing to stop Eli from bringing it up again and again. I’m the one taking care of Tom, not him, but he keeps insisting that Tom get in touch with his _attending physician_ , as well as threatened to call an ambulance, which would be the last thing that Tom wants. And I won’t even mention the unsubtle jibes he has made about my education, as well as my occupation.”

 

“First of all, _Russell_ ,” Szura began coldly, “I have already apologized for confusing your _occupation_ with that of a parks and recreations employee. How was I to know that park rangers don’t handle the garbage and toilet facilities? Second of all, calling the hospital is usually what one does when a man collapses with no warning. But, you should know that because you have _basic_ First Aid training,” he snickered.

 

“I have a hell of a lot more than _basic_ First Aid training,” Russell shot back at Szura.

 

“Russell, he’s only concerned about Tom’s wellbeing, because Eli was the one who paid for Tom’s expensive stay in the hospital,” Mariel blurted out before Russell could go on. “He has been a compassionate benefactor who has contributed his time and money into making the hospital a better place for both its staff and its patients. As soon as he heard that the hospital was having trouble getting Tom’s insurance company to cover his bills, Eli generously raised the amount needed to cover Tom’s surgery, his pricey stay in the ICU, and then the inflated amount to keep him in a private room. Do you have any idea what would have happened if we hadn’t been able to get that thirty-seven thousand odd dollars?”

 

Finally, Tom looked up to meet Szura’s pretentious gaze and questioned him in a panic. “I owe you thirty-seven thousand dollars?!”

 

“Oh, no need to worry, Tom,” Szura said eagerly, obviously thrilled that Tom was now paying attention to him. “It wouldn’t have been a good deed if I had expected repayment or intended to charge you interest.”

 

“Why would my insurance company refuse to pay for my treatment?” Tom broke eye contact with Szura again and looked at Russell instead. “I purchased travel insurance well in advance of the flight… I have all the receipts… Even if one of the requirements had not been met, the airline should have been held liable for all my expenses.”

 

Russell tried not to look alarmed at the sharp adjustment to Tom’s attitude. He was not surprised by how quick and clever Tom was with his assumptions, but his lover’s near panic over the subject of money worried him plenty. He’d been mildly concerned when Tom’s credit card had been rejected at the supermarket the previous morning, but he’d brushed it off as a clerical error because the brunette had seemed genuinely surprised by the incident. But now there was the matter with the insurance company… Tom had been nothing but honest and forthright with Russell from the beginning, so it was highly doubtful that he was hiding a financial problem from him. In fact, given Tom’s outstanding belief in justice and karma, Russell never would have pegged him for a man who allowed himself to fall into debt with the credit card company, or neglect to pay his insurance premiums.

 

“You can relax, Tom,” Szura reassured the brunette once more, appearing a bit miffed when Tom failed to do him the courtesy of looking in his direction again. “The money was a _gift_ and one does not go around seeking compensation for gifts.”

 

“Once I’ve settled the matter with my insurance company, I will pay you back in full,” Tom insisted, his attention again fixed on Russell’s cell phone. “I _appreciate_ all that you’ve done for me, but I am not the type to leave debts unpaid.”

 

Was it just Russell or had Tom’s roundabout sense of gratitude sounded contrived and nervous?

 

“Oh, I’m sure that you will find a way to pay me back,” Szura mused as he observed Tom out of the corner of his eye. “I’d expect nothing less from a law-abiding citizen such as yourself.”

 

Russell suspected that Szura had really wanted to label Tom as a _do-gooder_ or an _ass-kisser_ , or whatever other derogatory title had been floating around his conceited head, but had decided against it due to Mariel’s presence. As much as Russell loathed Szura and his high-and-mighty attitude, he couldn’t start up another argument now that he knew what the man had done for Tom. However, he also couldn’t figure out what was going on between his lover and the army general. They hadn’t had any previous contact with each other, at least not according to Szura who had forced his self-introduction on Tom – complete with his military title and background – as soon as the brunette had regained consciousness. But there was no denying the fact that Tom was afraid of Szura for some unknown reason and was completely inept at hiding it. It infuriated Russell even more to think that Szura was intimidating Tom to the point where he did not feel safe, whether it was intentional or not. Needing to prove to Tom that he had nothing to fear, Russell wrapped an arm around him and pulled him in close. Close enough that he could admire the light freckles that drew attention to the brunette’s high cheekbones and narrow nose, and the sweep of those long eyelashes that partially shielded his deep blue eyes. “If he can’t pay you back, I will,” Russell vowed as he leaned in to kiss Tom on the cheek. He would not allow Tom to worry about anything, financial or otherwise.

 

“I hadn’t realized that you had already reached that point in the relationship,” Szura commented neutrally, although the scathing look he gave Tom when the brunette tilted his head up to meet Russell’s lips in a brief kiss said something completely different. “So much for grieving for the dead.”

 

It took only an instant for that remark to cause Tom to grow cold inside and pull away from Russell in distress. “Tom…” Before Russell could formulate either something comforting to say to his lover, or something really vicious to throw in Szura’s face, Tom was out of his chair and halfway across the restaurant, heading towards the restrooms. “That was intentional, wasn’t it? You dumb son-of-a-bitch,” he accused furiously.

 

Even Mariel appeared flabbergasted at the callous comment that her date had made at the dinner table. “Eli, that was highly inappropriate.”

 

“Am I the only one who sees what a sham their relationship is?” Szura countered, fixing Russell with a look of pure hatred. “That poor man has just lost his wife, is dealing with a world of grief, and has yet to physically or psychologically recover from his ordeal, but the only thing on your mind is how quickly you can get into bed with him.”

 

“That’s rich coming from a home-wrecker who knowingly seduced a married woman and then slept with her before the divorce was even finalized!”

 

“That isn’t what happened,” Mariel protested, her face turning a very unflattering shade of red as she glared daggers at Russell from across the table. “Were you spying on me? Is that it? Did you hire someone to follow me?”

 

“I didn’t have to!” Russell threw his napkin onto the table and gave his ex-wife a look of contempt while contemplating how he was going to knock out all of Szura’s teeth. “You didn’t even bother to cover your tracks! You took that jerk to the bed and breakfast that we went to for our third anniversary, where my co-worker’s wife just so happens to work part-time. I guess you didn’t stop to think that the people in this small town would have nothing better to do with their time than gossip about adultery.”

 

“That’s _the only_ place we could have gone to avoid getting caught by you. Like you said, it’s a small town. And we didn’t plan it, it just happened. Not unlike what happened between you and Tom. I’m not going to apologize for the romance that I am entitled to – the romance that hadn’t been in our marriage for over two years before we ended it.”

 

“That’s fine,” Russell said evenly as he tore his gaze from Mariel’s embittered face. “You can have your _romance_ with the heartless freak who--.” He turned to personally insult Szura to his face, only to find that the general had slipped away while they had been arguing. Had he gone to pay the bill? Russell strained his eyes to see to the front of the restaurant, but couldn’t locate the well dressed man in the expensive suit and tie anywhere. _He wouldn’t have dared…!_ Would he? Had he actually followed Tom to the restroom after implying that Tom didn’t give a crap about his dead wife?! Where else could he have disappeared to? “Mariel, I swear, if I catch that trash-talking asshole upsetting Tom again, I’m going to smash his face in,” he threatened as he pushed his chair back. “And I don’t give a shit what kind of good Samaritan you _think_ he is.”

 

“Russell, please calm down. Eli’s been in gunfights and hand-to-hand combat,” Mariel protested, actually sounding like she cared that her ex-husband might be taking on more than he could handle. “If you get into it with him, you might wind up in the emergency room! I don’t even know why you’re blowing this out of proportion anyway. He paid for Tom’s medical bills. He might be shockingly less tactful than you, but he’s still a good guy.”

 

“I hope you’re right, because if I catch your _good guy_ harassing my boyfriend, he’ll be paying for his own medical bills.”

 

* * *

 

 

There were more mirrors inside the men’s restroom than Tom cared to count. He had pushed the door inwards and escaped inside, only to find himself confronted with multiple reflections of his spooked face and haunted eyes. It took a few seconds for his eyes to acclimatize themselves to the dim lighting, but once they had he wished that everything had remained out of focus. He barely recognized the frightened image that looked back at him when he stopped in front of one of the large sinks to contemplate what he should do about the uncontrollable panic building inside of him. Without Russell’s support and comfort, Tom felt defenseless and uneasy, but he couldn’t have stayed at that table for one second longer. Not with that callous army general surreptitiously admiring him like a trophy to be won.

 

Tom impulsively turned on the faucet, quickly adjusted the water temperature until the tap began to spout out a steady stream of really warm water. Not hot water, but significantly warmer than lukewarm. He put down the stopper, waited until the sink was nearly full, and then plunged his arms into the water, leaning forward so that he could immerse his elbows in the mini-bath that he’d created. After a moment of letting his forearms adjust to the comforting sensation of being surrounding by water, he scooped up a handful of it to splash his face with. Being in the presence of Szura had unnerved Tom completely, but the soothing contact with the water gradually began to erase the irrational fear that he’d felt escalating inside of him. Not only the fear of what Szura had done or what he might be capable of doing, but also the terror that Tom felt at the loss of control over his own emotions.

 

If Tom hadn’t already suspected Szura of having a hand in what had happened to him at the hospital, listening to the man’s repeated attempts to get him taken back there had made it perfectly clear that Szura’s agenda was not as philanthropic as he would have others believe.

 

Tom was so lost in the tantalizing sensation of the warm water caressing his skin that he almost didn’t feel the buzz of energy that quickly trailed down his spine. Almost, but not quite.

 

“I was right about you.”

 

Tom jumped back from the sink at the sound of the commanding voice behind him, abandoning the safety of the water that he longed to cover his body and mind with in favor of protecting himself from the respectfully dressed Szura who loomed nearby.

 

When Szura took a step towards Tom, Tom instinctively backed away, never taking his eyes off of the exit that the general was now blocking.

 

“Would you look at yourself,” Szura said with a pleased grin. “You’re soaking wet, the sink is overflowing, and you don’t even realize the changes that have taken place inside of you.”

 

Tom raised his palms to look at them, noticing for the first time that he hadn’t bothered to roll up his shirt sleeves in his confusion. There were puddles on the floor all around him, his shirt was indeed soaking wet, water was dripping down his face and neck, and the sink to his right looked like a waterfall that had reached its capacity. The rational part of himself, which was not functioning very well with Szura so close, warned him that he couldn’t afford to pay for water damages in his current financial state. But the primal part of him that rated survival higher than any other petty concern would not allow him to move back to the sink to turn off the faucet. Not while Szura was standing there with his taunting leer and a look of pity in his eyes.

 

“It wasn’t very polite of you to reject the lavish meal that I treated you to tonight,” Szura scolded with a click of his tongue.

 

“I would be foolish to fall for the same trap twice,” Tom said sourly before he could hold his tongue.

 

“You must be referring to the sedatives that I had added to your water,” Szura said matter-of-factly. “There’s no need to look surprised. Did you really think that I would deny it like some spineless twit? Yes, Tom, I drugged you and may have been responsible for some of the more unsightly marks on your arms. I never really mastered the art of being gentle with a syringe.”

 

“Get out of here!” Tom ordered as he tried to keep the tremors out of his voice. “You’re insane! If you come any closer…”

 

“You’ll what? Tell everyone what I did to you? For one thing, no one will believe you. Even Mariel believes that I’m madly in love with her, which I trust you know I am not, so I invite you to challenge my acting skills if you feel up to it.” Szura approached Tom slowly, forcing him into the back of the restroom where the cubicles were lined up against the far wall. “For another, if you make an enemy out of me, you’ll never find out what really happened to you after that plane crash. Besides, how do you know it was _your_ steak that I had poisoned this time?”

 

“ _Russell!”_ Tom rushed forward, intent on plowing past Szura in order to get to Russell, but the general was faster and stronger, gripping Tom by his upper arms and shoving him backwards. Aside from the floor being slippery from all the water, Tom had yet to recover a fraction of his former strength, so it didn’t take much to knock him off balance. He would have fallen if it hadn’t been for Szura grabbing hold of him by his waist and shoulder at the last moment, steadying him until he could stand on his own again.

 

“This may sound difficult to believe, Tom, but I have no intention of hurting you.”

 

“After what you did to me…,” Tom grabbed for the arm around his waist, only to discover that Szura was not about to let him go anytime soon.

 

“Had you continued to obey Dr. Feld’s orders, we wouldn’t have had the need to resort to violence,” Szura explained mildly as he subdued Tom’s struggling and pulled the brunette up against his chest. “I can see why that park custodian is so enamored with you. You are quite stunning in person.”

 

“Russell is a _park ranger_ , not a _custodian_ ,” Tom emphasized indignantly. “Now get your hands off of me!” Being this close to Szura was unbearable for Tom for so many reasons. For one thing, he wouldn’t stand for anyone but Russell embracing him in that manner. For another, that electrical charge running through his body was just becoming worse by the minute. Coupled with the feel of Szura’s hard muscles gripping him, and the overpowering stench of arousal, sweat, and a musky cologne mixed with red wine and half-raw beef, it was more than Tom’s senses were capable of handling all at once.

 

“This might be confusing for you to understand right now, but you belong with me, Tom. In fact, you were _made_ for me. I went to a lot of trouble to arrange things the way they are now and I won’t allow either your lack of comprehension of your own basic instincts, or the interference of an undereducated twit to stand in my way.”

 

The tighter that Szura held onto Tom, the colder Tom felt inside, and the worse the buzzing inside of his head got. Being in close physical contact with this insane lunatic obviously felt wrong, but for a more profound reason than it being an insult to the commitment Tom had made to Russell. Why would Szura have lied to Mariel and fooled her into believing that he loved her if he liked to play both sides of the field? And being embraced by Szura was nothing like what it felt like to be held by Russell. Whereas Russell could be aggressive in a passionate way, there was nothing more to Szura’s hold than a need to control and dominate. Even when Szura attempted to kiss Tom, he did so in an efficient, clinical way that Tom was able to anticipate… and actively avoid.

 

“You have no concept of the power you are defying,” Szura warned in a dangerously impatient tone as he wrestled Tom’s arms back down to his sides. “I could give you anything you want, Tom. Whether it be a new job, a better house that meets government safety regulations, or the security of a mutually beneficial partnership with a man who knows _what_ you are.”

 

“I don’t want anything from you,” Tom said firmly as he struggled against Szura.

 

“If you won’t think of yourself, at least consider that wretch of a child that you’ll be forced to raise penniless should you continue to oppose me!”

 

“Leave my daughter out of your sick mind games!”

 

“Think about it, Tom. How will you support yourself _and_ your offspring when you are evicted from your house, jobless and abandoned by the _human_ you have been duped into believing is your _soul mate_?”

 

“Evicted from my house…,” Tom repeated without amusement. “I assume you’re going to tell me that the bank mysteriously lost the deed to my house, along with my credit card rating, access to my savings account, and all my insurance information? And not only do I owe you more money than I can afford, but now I need to rely on you for financial assistance?”

 

“That about sums it up,” Szura agreed calmly.

 

Tom stopped trying to pull away from Szura and charged into him instead, ramming him backwards and into the overflowing sink. The sound of Szura’s spine hitting the edge of the marble countertop was immensely satisfying to Tom, as was the look on the general’s face when he revealed what he had been doing with Russell’s cell phone during dinner. “You may have had my cell phone disconnected this afternoon to prevent me from acting against you, but you weren’t fast enough to stop the transaction that I began this morning. I knew that it was no coincidence that I was losing access to my financial records and electronic devices, but I couldn’t figure out why. To play it safe, I had my house, the investments that you weren’t able to find, and my car put into Russell’s name. He received a confirmation email finalizing the changes five minutes ago.”

 

“Oh, you are clever, aren’t you?” Szura practically applauded Tom, before grabbing him by the hair and wrenching his head in close. “Bleeding Varon dry will be a minor setback for me – nothing more – so listen carefully because I won’t be repeating myself. Tomorrow, when you accompany that _park ranger_ to work, you will remain behind in the ranger station and allow him to do his duties without you. I don’t care what you have to tell him, but you will get rid of him.   After he has gone, I will come for you and we will have a proper discussion about your future – with me. And make no mistake, you will choose to be with me once you have understood what it is that you have become. You will do as I command or I promise you Ranger Varon will be found in a pool of his own blood by your bedside the next day.”

 

“No,” Tom flat-out refused, trying to pry Szura’s fingers away from his hair. “I’m going to go to the Sheriff’s Department to report you and your threats!”

 

“Why don’t you apply for that deputy position that you’ve had your eye on while you’re there?” Szura laughed sinisterly.   “I can have one of my men swear you in on the spot.” He smirked gleefully when Tom’s expression became a lot more desperate and lost some of the fire that he’d been fighting with. “I have contacts everywhere. If you try to screw me over, I’ll end Ranger Varon and teach you a lesson you won’t soon forget. What I’m asking of you is really simple if you think about it. Just make yourself available for an hour or so tomorrow so that I can properly educate you on your miraculous survival. After that, you’ll be free to return to your normal life… that is, if you’re able to with the knowledge that I will be imparting you with.” Trusting that Tom now had a clearer vision of what it was he was messing with, Szura released him and took a step back.

 

It was at that exact moment that Russell barged into the restroom looking like he had had enough drama for one day. Although his eyes were blazing furiously at Szura, his expression looked haggard and pushed to the limit. “What the hell is going on in here?”

 

“I found him practically halfway in the sink in a sort of trance,” Szura explained innocently. “He may have been hallucinating.”

 

Tom glanced down at his clothing, stricken at the thought that he was causing Russell so much grief and suffering. He didn’t know what Szura wanted with him, but he blamed himself for the threats the general had made against his lover’s life. For all he knew, Szura was both capable and willing to carry them out should Tom choose to defy him again. There was absolutely nothing Tom could do to retaliate now that he knew that the Sheriff’s Department was in Szura’s pocket.

 

“Russ… I’m sorry,” Tom began, thinking about how he must look, standing there with his shirt soaked and his face damp with water, his hair askew from where Szura had been grabbing at it. And in the background, the sink continued to overflow onto the floor, spreading outwards in a massive, destructive puddle.

 

For a second, Russell’s eyes shone with emotion, before he rushed forward to take Tom into his arms. “There’s nothing to be sorry for,” he said quickly, beginning to gently stroke Tom’s hair. “You did this to yourself?” He seemed to ask it as an afterthought, but it sounded very much like he didn’t believe that Szura hadn’t had any part in it.

 

“I’m sorry,” Tom numbly repeated, swallowing hard when Russell kissed him and began to dry his face with the back of his sleeve.

 

“I’m the one who should be apologizing. I never should have taken you out tonight. It was far too soon.” Then Russell was taking off his jacket and wrapping it around Tom’s shoulders, doing his best to conceal the soggy state of the brunette’s clothing. “Are you going to get that?” Russell indicated the faucet to Szura in a curt manner and led Tom out of the restroom, out the back exit of the restaurant, and far from the clutches of Eli Szura.


	12. Chapter 12

**Day 10: The perfect end to a terrible evening**

 

“Do you want my coleslaw?” Russell asked, his fork hovering over the small plastic container sitting in the middle of his empty takeout tray.

 

“Thanks, but I still have mine,” Tom replied as he leaned forward to dig his fork into another piece of fried chicken. He wasted no time in popping it into his mouth and chewing on it ravenously, before targeting a grouping of French fries next.

 

“Could you please eat a bit slower? We’re pretty far from the main road and I don’t want you to make yourself sick.”

 

“I haven’t eaten anything since breakfast,” Tom reminded Russell between bites. “I’m starving.” Having said that, he made short work of the French fries, seemed to change his mind about the extra coleslaw, and helped himself to Russell’s portion after finishing his own.

 

Pressing his lips firmly together, Russell resisted the urge to ask Tom what had been wrong with his steak dinner. The last thing he wanted to do was to distract his lover from the first substantial meal that he’d enjoyed since leaving the hospital. Russell couldn’t blame him for not being too keen on their company for the evening, but he felt that it was a darn shame to let such good food go to waste. The portions hadn’t been adequate to satiate the appetite of a hardworking man like Russell, so he would’ve gladly cleaned off Tom’s plate as well, if it hadn’t been for that disturbing scene that he had walked in on in the restroom back there. Seeing Szura so close to Tom had stirred up some pretty raw emotions in him that he hadn’t been aware he was capable of feeling. Although he believed strongly in monogamy and loyalty, he couldn’t remember ever feeling so territorial or possessive over any of his ex-flames. He had never been cheated on in the past – at least not until Mariel’s little pre-divorce affair – and he’d always remained faithful to his partners. There had never been any motivating factor to stir up those types of barbaric emotions in him.

 

And it wasn’t that he didn’t trust Tom. No, it was Szura that he didn’t trust. Russell knew that it was crazy of him to think such a thing, but he honestly believed that the general’s interest in Tom went far beyond that of a concerned citizen with an open check book. It wasn’t an idea that logically made sense, rather it was more of a latent protective instinct that Tom seemed to have triggered in him. Having no experience with such jealous and contemptuous emotions, he could barely understand what it was that he was feeling. The only thing that he was certain of was that he would not allow that insulting man near Tom again. Because Tom _belonged_ to Russell. Russell was damn sure of that. The gorgeous brunette with the piercing blue eyes whom he’d first discovered in the IC ward was _his,_ heart and soul. Although he’d felt something powerful and indescribable for Tom since day one, those feelings had intensified to an immitigable level after the intimacy that they had shared on the embankment of the swamp.  

 

“You smell good,” Russell sighed as he wrapped an arm around Tom and nuzzled the back of his neck, inhaling that sweet, fresh scent of life that was somewhat alien, while at the same time all too familiar.

 

“What do I smell like?” Tom asked in amusement, still intent on getting every last shred of coleslaw onto his plastic fork, treating the chicken dinner that Russell had picked up for him like his last meal.

 

Without hesitation, Russell murmured by Tom’s ear, “The Glades. You smell like the cove… after it’s rained…” It was a warm, comforting smell, something that was unique to Tom and Tom alone. Even after showering, or during the moments when they were most intimate with each other, Tom’s scent failed to change. Maybe it was all in Russell’s head, a psychological glitch due to his long-standing relationship with the Glades. He loved the wilderness that he had spent the better part of his adulthood in, and he also loved Tom – although he loved Tom a great deal more – so why shouldn’t he form a connection between the two? “It’s funny because we’re so close to the lake that I should be able to smell a powerful fishy odor instead. This area has a high concentration of barium and cadmium, not to mention the algae overgrowth. But all I can smell is you.”

 

“Then perhaps you’re lucky because all I can smell is that fishy odor that you just described. It’s so strong that I thought for a moment we were eating deep fried fish instead of chicken.”

 

While Tom had meant that as a joke, Russell couldn’t help but think back to what Szura had said, worrying that his lover was now hallucinating and having issues separating fantasy from reality. What the hell had Tom been doing in that restroom? And why had he been practically drenched when Russell had barged in on him? Even now, the brunette’s shirt was still partially damp, as were sections of his dressed slacks. Russell had hung the shirt over a nearby tree branch to dry and insisted that Tom wear his jacket, even buttoning it up for him to ensure he didn’t catch a cold. After the mercilessly awkward dinner with Szura and Mariel, Russell had been all for taking Tom home where he could properly discuss what had happened. Tom, on the other hand, had had other plans, first complaining that he was hungry, and then expressing a keen reluctance to go home.

 

Russell hadn’t known what to do with Tom at first because all that aged wine had given him a headache, and guaranteed the loss of his license should he try to get behind the wheel intoxicated. So, left with no other alternatives, he’d bribed Tom into walking three kilometers down the rural highway to Country Chicken Hut with the promise of a filling meal of crispy chicken tenders accompanied by a ridiculously large stack of French fries. Upon arriving at the family restaurant, Tom had made things more difficult by refusing to go inside, so Russell had been forced to order takeout and carry the bags of food and drinks down to the lake, which had been another two kilometers downhill. The dark, lonely little beach at the end of the dirt trail had been the only place that Russell could think of to bring Tom to be _alone_ together. Because Tom had made it perfectly clear, in a completely nonverbal manner, that he was done with socializing for the day.

 

“Tom…” Russell pressed a kiss to Tom’s neck and held him tighter, to reassure himself more than anything else that his lover was solid and real, unlike the bizarre situation that he’d gotten himself involved in. Even though he had only known the brunette for a short period of time, Russell knew him well enough to know when he was being distant. He disliked how quiet and introspective Tom had become, feeling the weight of silence to the point where it soon became unbearable. “Why were you soaking wet back there?”

 

At first, Tom didn’t answer, choosing to place his empty tray down on the sandy beach and look up at the starry sky. The light from the stars and the early evening moon were enough to illuminate their tiny patch of beach, but it was still too dark to make out facial expressions or the details of their surroundings. That’s why Russell had taken a portable LED lantern out of the back of his jeep, carrying it with them along the road so that they would be able to see where they were going, and so that they wouldn’t get run down off the side of the rural highway in the middle of the blackened night. The lantern sat in front of them, casting a pale yellowish light on Tom’s face and making his blue eyes take on a bit of a pale green tinge as he glanced back at Russell. “I honestly don’t know why I did that, Russ. I wish I knew… but I don’t.”

 

Well, at least he was answering honestly, which was all Russell had been hoping for really. “Do you remember doing it?”

 

“Of course,” Tom replied smoothly. “I was not hallucinating nor was I in a trance.” Although his tone remained even, it was obvious that Tom was not at all pleased with Szura’s interpretation of his actions.

 

Gambling on his gut instinct, Russell quickly asked his next question before his common sense could talk him out of it. “Why are you afraid of that prick Szura?” He could’ve phrased it as a yes or no question, but tonight he lacked the patience for beating around the bush. He was not going to ask a question to which he already knew the answer.

 

“I’m not afraid of…,” Tom responded automatically, tensing up against Russell when he was unable to finish his sentence truthfully.

 

As Russell had suspected for a while now, Tom was incapable of lying. Whether it was just to him or to people in general, Russell wasn’t sure, but he had gotten used to reading his lover well enough to know that lying was not Tom’s style. No, Tom preferred leaving things unmentioned as opposed to outright lying about them. “Tom, please don’t lie to me.”

 

“I have never lied to you, Russell. Not once,” Tom said earnestly.

 

“Yeah, see, that’s the problem.” Russell tightened his hold on Tom and spoke roughly by his ear. “Not telling me things that might be important are lies by omission. I know that you’re in some kind of trouble, Tom. Why else would you have transferred all your property and investments to me?” Although Russell had experienced his fair share of shocking news, skimming over that email message addressed to him from Tom’s financial advisor had truly blown him out of the water. “You obviously trusted me enough to safely guard your daughter’s trust fund, so why can’t you trust me with the truth? I don’t care what it is you’re involved in. I will protect you no matter what because I love you. Just don’t lie to me.”

 

“That’s just it. I don’t want you to get involved,” Tom protested. “I’ve already lost my entire life. You and Kira are all that I have left. If anything were to happen to either of you…”

 

“What do you mean that you’ve lost your entire life?” Russell asked in confusion. “Do you mean _Grace_?” Uttering the name of Tom’s deceased wife stung more than Russell thought it would have, imagining how his lover might be comparing him to the first love of his life.

 

“No. I don’t know how to explain this to you.” In frustration, Tom plunged his hands into the cool sand at his sides, gripping handfuls of the fine granules and raising his fists to show Russell what he meant. “Before you took me here tonight, _this_ was lost.” He fumbled for the right words to elaborate, failed, and ended up just watching the sand sift through his fingers to either fall back to the beach or sail away in the evening breeze.

 

“Keep trying,” Russell pleaded, not wanting to come out and admit that he had no idea what the hell it was that Tom wanted to say. Was the sand supposed to symbolize something in the brunette’s life? Maybe he was using the sand analogy to refer to the loss of time? Or was he experiencing a loss of control over his life due to the accident?

 

Every time a hurricane hit Homestead, which was pretty damn often during the wet season, Russell was forced to practice his psychology skills on frightened and traumatized citizens or tourists, but nothing compared to what his relationship with Tom was demanding of him. He was being expected to understand something that he couldn’t even identify. For Tom, he was willing to make the effort to understand, but the unknown far outweighed what he did know about the brunette. Although he hated to associate the word _damaged_ with the man that he had fallen in love with at first sight, that was exactly how he felt about Tom’s mental and emotional state. Loving Tom was easy, but understanding what he was going through and where he was coming from was anything but.

 

“I remember taking Kira to the beach last summer,” Tom said after an agonizingly long pause. “I remember the pink swimsuit with the little black bows at the shoulders that she was wearing. I’d bought it for her the previous week, after she threw a temper tantrum down at the mall. Grace….” The name apparently upset Tom because he hesitated before continuing. “She was the stricter parent… She refused to buy it because Kira already had five swimsuits that she could still get into. But I gave in because I didn’t know how to handle Kira’s mood swings. I still don’t,” he corrected himself. “As soon as we got to the beach, Kira tossed off her t-shirt and shorts and went racing for the water in her new swimsuit. And Grace nearly hit the roof when she saw that I’d gone behind her back and bought it. We got into an argument about my bad parenting skills and by the time Kira came out of the water, we were on opposite ends of the beach, ignoring each other. By that time it was quite late and I was so annoyed with Grace for shouting at me in public that I refused to eat dinner with her.”

 

“Well, that happens,” Russell said uncomfortably as he scratched at an imaginary itch on his arm. “Couples fight. Mariel and I needed a referee for some of our more traumatizing shouting matches. But… I don’t know why you’re telling me this.”

 

“You’re missing the point,” Tom said impatiently. “I wasn’t trying to illustrate how Grace and I argued over trivial matters. What I am trying to convey to you is the accuracy with which I am able to recall exactly what happened on that afternoon. I remember what everyone was wearing, where I parked the car, the plastic spade that Kira accidentally cracked between the sand and a rock… All the little details. But I can’t remember _this._ ” Again, he grasped at the grains of sand between his fingers, futilely attempting to hold onto them as they escaped in a dusty waterfall. “I’ve done this a million times in the past, but today it feels new. I can’t remember the sensation of having sand run through my fingers, or the fishy smell of the lake water being carried by the breeze. I even forgot how soft the petals of a rose are, and the fragrant perfume of its scent. And the water… I can’t begin to describe what I feel when I touch the water…”

 

Finally, Russell began to understand what it was that Tom was describing. It was complicated and difficult to fathom, but it made perfect sense considering the way his lover had been responding to just about any stimulus since the accident. Tom had lost the memory of sensation, which was why everything he had seen and touched since then seemed like he was experiencing it again for the first time.

 

“I think I get what you’re trying to say,” Russell said with a heavy sigh. “I can’t imagine how you must feel having to re-experience every sensation over again. But I don’t know what this has to do with you being afraid of losing me and Kira. Or why you signed over everything you own to me without my knowledge. And Szura…” When Tom just sat there quietly, stroking Russell’s bare arm with his sandy fingers, Russell impulsively gave voice to his troubling concerns. “This is going to sound crazy, especially considering the fact that the bastard is sleeping with my ex-wife, but I am pretty damn sure that Szura was checking you out at the dinner table tonight. No, don’t interrupt me. I don’t give a shit that he’s some hotshot general, or that he makes three times as much as me. And who Mariel chooses to hook up with is her own business, _unless_ I think he is a danger to my son. Judging by your expression when I walked in on you in the restroom, I got the feeling that you didn’t feel very safe being alone with him.” Russell grasped Tom’s fingers to still them on his arm, and tried to catch the attention of those wandering blue eyes. “Tom?”

 

Still avoiding looking at Russell, Tom shakily answered but kept his gaze fixated on the lake. “When we got near him in the restaurant… I started to feel _sick_. Like there was an electrical current surging in my head. It was the same feeling I got at the hospital, when the man who was giving Dr. Feld orders would enter the room. I never saw him, but…his voice…”

 

“ _What?!”_ Russell clamped both hands on Tom’s upper arms and forced the brunette to look at him. “Are you trying to tell me that that was the sicko who left you covered in bruises and needle marks? Why the hell didn’t you tell me right then and there?!” Screw Szura’s military status and elite training in hand-to-hand combat! As soon as Russell got his hands on that piece of shit, not even the best surgeons at Homestead Memorial Regional Hospital would be able to stitch him back together.

 

“I never saw him,” Tom replied emotionally. “I heard his voice, once, but it was muffled. I couldn’t just accuse him without proof…”

 

“But you’re sure that it was him,” Russell persisted, his voice shaking with anger.

 

“I accused him of it in the restroom… and he admitted it. But..,” Tom hurriedly added before Russell could interrupt. “… when I threatened to go to the Sheriff’s Department, he revealed not only that he had men on the inside, but also that he knew of my intention to apply for a position there. Russ, I only ever told you about my ambition to become a deputy, and both times the subject came up we were inside the house.”

 

“That had to be a coincidence.” Russell was not interested in hearing more of Tom’s paranoid speculations. He would deal with the wild theories later, once he was done beating the shit out of Szura. “Did he hurt you again?” Not waiting for Tom to answer, Russell shifted his position so that he was sitting in front of the brunette, and began to roll up the jacket sleeves to check for injuries that he may have missed with his earlier cursory glance. Sure enough, there were new bruises forming on his lover’s forearms where Szura had probably grabbed him. “I asked you if you had done that to yourself back there and you lied to me,” Russell said with a mixture of fury and grief. “I would’ve gladly punched that bastard out to protect you, you have to know that. Why the hell did you lie to me?”

 

“I didn’t lie to you,” Tom protested tearfully. “You asked me about the water and I gave you a truthful answer about it. I just didn’t tell you what happened afterwards.”

 

Comforting Tom over the death of his wife was one thing, but seeing him in tears after having been roughed up by the man who had been abusing him back at the hospital was too much for Russell to take. “It doesn’t matter why you didn’t tell me,” he said in a gentler, soothing tone as he pulled Tom back into his embrace and held him tightly. “You won’t be afraid of that monster once I’ve beaten the shit out of him. And while I’m kicking the crap out of him, I’m going to find out what the hell his connection is to Dr. Feld and what he wants with you.”

 

“You can’t go after him!” Tom grabbed Russell’s wrists that were locked around his waist and tried to make him let go. “You have no idea what he’s capable of! Or the kind of power and influence he has.”

 

“I don’t need to know,” Russell shot back, refusing to let go of Tom in case his lover decided to run off and have an accident out on the dark beach, or… to prevent him from heading in the direction of the water. Why that scared him, Russell did not know, he only knew that he wanted to keep Tom as far away from the water as possible, at least until he figured out whether or not the brunette’s fascination with it was potentially dangerous. “Look, Tom, we haven’t known each other for very long, but I’m sure that you can tell that I’m not the type of guy who lets someone get away with hurting a loved one. So what if he has military training and a brainwashed doctor to intimidate me with! I’ve dealt with psychos like him before. I’m going to make him regret what he did to you.”

 

“What is wrong with you?!” Tom shouted angrily at Russell, finally succeeding in pulling free to confront him face to face. His blue eyes were bloodshot and filled with tears, which continued to streak down his face as he lay into Russell. “You selectively chose to hear only what you wanted to hear and ignore what is really upsetting me. I believe that Szura actually does have men inside the Sheriff’s Department, just as I _know_ that he was inside my house, while we were sleeping! He fraudulently had my insurance claim revoked, my credit card canceled, _and_ my cell phone and Internet disconnected without me receiving even a notification. _That_ is why I had everything I own put into your name. He wants to have complete control over my life and he threatened to leave Kira and myself on the streets, or _kill you_ if I challenged him again! And here you are stating that you intend to take a fistfight to a madman who is waiting with either a lethal poison or a loaded weapon!”

 

“Whoa, calm down.” That little outburst had been totally unexpected, especially coming from what Russell had thought was a quiet and slightly introverted man. Although usually quite positive and relaxed about life, under the surface Tom was filled with an emotional turmoil that he could barely contain. Russell could hardly blame him, considering what the brunette had been through with the plane crash, the hospital, and now Szura. But if Tom thought that Szura’s evil deeds and death threat were going to make him back down, he was sorely mistaken. If anything, hearing what Szura had done to Tom only made Russell angrier and fueled his outrage. Forget what Szura was capable of, Tom wasn’t truly aware of what Russell was capable of.

 

“And he is obsessed with me,” Tom continued, now sounding more helpless than anything else. “He has this sick fantasy in his mind that I belong to him, like I’m a piece of his property or something. I think that the only reason he took an interest in your ex-wife was to get to me in the hospital. That can be the only reason why he flat-out admitted that he has no feelings for Mariel whatsoever.”

 

“He said that to you?!” This was going way beyond the scope of a mere stalker. What sort of crazed individual meticulously planned the seduction of a married – albeit unhappily – doctor, the infiltration of the Sheriff’s Department, and the fraudulent hijacking of a man’s entire financial identity in order to gain control over him?! What were Szura’s exact intentions towards Tom, and how long had that psychopath been targeting him for? Russell felt his face turning red and began to clench his teeth, trying very hard not to fly into a rage in front of Tom and upset him further. He narrowed his eyes on the brunette’s face, which was wet with tears, forcing himself to think clearly in order to figure out when the hell Szura had first made an appearance in Tom’s life. Had it really been after the accident? Was he a sadistic monster who had latched onto the possibility of manipulating and abusing a helpless plane crash survivor? A survivor whose attractive looks and fascinating personality had been perhaps too appealing to overlook? Or had he taken an interest in Tom from way before that? Maybe the plane crash had been the opening that he’d been waiting for. “You said that you recognized his voice from the hospital… What about his face? Or his name? The article they ran on you in the newspaper said that you were a major in the military. If Szura is a general, he could have been one of your commanding officers… or he might have served on the same base where all this stalking bullshit began.”

 

“I swear to you, Russell, I’d never encountered that man before in my life. According to his insufferable boasting, he spends most of his time on combat tours, whereas I’ve never had any field combat experience. I mainly dealt with military intelligence and risk assessment… I spent most of my time in front of a computer screen.”

 

Russell carefully wrapped an arm around Tom’s shoulders and pulled him into a tight embrace, partially relieved that he could finally ask the questions that he’d been too afraid to ask due to his lover’s fragile emotional state. “Why hasn’t the military contacted you and offered to help you out with the bills? Or at least to ask you when you’d be fit to return to duty?” Not that Russell actually wanted Tom to return to work, and certainly not if it meant them being separated by area restrictions and secret operations.   But if Tom belonged to the military, why was he looking into a job with the Sheriff’s Department?

 

“I resigned my commission last month in order to spend more time with Kira. And to be avoid being stationed overseas.”

 

“That was probably a good decision.” Russell tried not to let his approval sound too biased, but the last thing he wanted was to have his heart broken if Tom were to be injured or killed in the line of duty. Something about Tom’s attitude towards life and his desire to avoid conflict told Russell that the brunette wasn’t suitable for that kind of occupation anyhow. “If everything you’re saying is true, Tom, then this Szura freak has to be confronted. I don’t want him anywhere near you or my son. And someone has to let Mariel know that her heroic military boytoy is nothing but a conniving psychopath.”

 

“What are you going to do? Tell Mariel that she should leave him based on a private exchange I had with him in the washroom, or because you think she should trust some _sixth sense_ I have about him? I never actually saw him in the hospital, and even if I had, he would’ve had a perfectly legitimate reason for being there given his reputation as a good Samaritan. There is also no proof of how he tampered with my finances, nor is there any way to trace him to a rejected insurance claim.” Tom tiredly sagged in Russell’s embrace, too drained to continue to match the ranger’s raised voice levels. “If you involve Mariel at this point, or let Szura know that you’re onto him, there’s no telling how he’ll react. Consider what he has already done and what he is willing to do. You will be endangering everyone with your impulsiveness if you act now.”

 

All Russell needed was one minute with Szura… just one merciful minute to put an end to him. Would Tom be comfortable with that kind of justice?

 

For the time being, as much as Russell hated to admit it, Tom was right. There was absolutely nothing that they could do until they had some sort of proof that Szura was an evil bastard. Right now, the only thing they had on him were Tom’s farfetched accusations and Russell’s suspicions and gut instinct.

 

“Promise me you won’t confront him,” Tom pleaded.

 

All Russell had to do was look into the terrified face of his lover to lose the fierce grip that he had on his volatile emotions. While Tom was definitely afraid of Szura, he seemed to be more afraid of losing Russell. The intense look in those deep blue eyes that Russell adored conveyed a sense of desperation that the brunette made no attempt to hide. To Tom, Russell was now everything, a life partner who was essential to his existence. Russell couldn’t remember ever feeling such love, passion, or dedication from anyone he had ever been with. And it wasn’t because his relationship with Tom was fresh and new. There was something about Tom, something innocent and pure that Russell had to protect at all costs. It was obvious to Russell that Tom’s love would never waver, and there would never be any cause to question his loyalty. “Fine. I’ll play that bastard’s twisted game… for now,” Russell hissed through his gritted teeth. “But, you belong to _me_.” Not caring that he might be sounding a bit obsessive, Russell squeezed Tom tighter to him and rested his scruffy cheek on top of the brunette’s soft head of hair. “If he lays one finger on you, I’ll put him in the ground. No questions asked.”

 

Probably having no idea how to respond to what sounded like a typical testosterone-charged threat, Tom merely hugged Russell tightly and remained silent. As much as Russell wanted to assuage Tom’s fears, he kept his thoughts to himself. There were things about his past – violent, awful things – that gave him the experience and knowledge to deal with the likes of Szura. But, while that information might temporarily pacify Tom’s concerns, it could also serve to push the brunette away and damage their loving, trusting relationship. Well, if Tom was entitled to his secrets, then why couldn’t Russell withhold some tales of his own? Anyway, Russell’s individual past had nothing to do with their future together. Some things were better left unsaid.

 


	13. Chapter 13

**Day 11: Initiation**

_If I see one more drab looking park ranger uniform, I swear I’m going to hang someone by it!_

 

Szura had passed by at least seven undereducated buffoons wearing the official Everglades garb on the drive up to Ranger Station 4. While most of them had had the decency to tuck their putrid green shirts in, only two of them had been wearing a presentable pair of slacks. And only the one had had the common sense to secure those slacks up with a belt. One idiot had even been missing his tacky _Florida Park Service_ shoulder patch, not that its presence made the wearer seem like any less of a jackass in Szura’s eyes. That’s what all those park rangers were – jackasses. But nothing compared to the pretentious way that that lady’s man – Russell _fucking_ Varon – had had the gull to dress for the day. How Tom’s empty-headed hero had gotten away with wearing a pair of ripped and faded blue jeans to work, with his uniform shirt left wide open to expose his sweat-stained grey t-shirt underneath, was beyond Szura. And what dimwit had decided that unskilled laborers could waltz around with shiny golden badges attached above their breast pockets anyway? They made a mockery of the deputies who policed the town and did more useful things during their work days than tend to lost alligators and overgrown shrubbery.

 

How on earth had Szura had the misfortune of having his potential partner swooped up by the likes of Varon? That man looked and acted the part of a good looking – yet characterless – womanizer. Always smiling at the ladies, whether they be his androgynous coworkers or pretty tourists clothed in skimpy shorts and halter tops. Varon probably wouldn’t have had any trouble getting laid on any given night, except that he apparently had no interest in any of the women who sought to hook up with him. Unfortunately for Szura, Varon was completely invested in Tom and no amount of threatening or bribery would shake him loose. As much as it sickened Szura to admit it, Varon had fallen deeply in love with the airplane crash victim and seemed to be willing to do anything to protect him. And given Varon’s rap sheet, that _anything_ could encompass a hell of a lot.

 

“Finally,” Szura hissed through his clenched teeth when the door to the ratty ranger station opened and Tom Underlay tentatively stepped outside. “Keep testing me, Tom,” he seethed, watching the brunette glance over in his general direction, and then pause. If Tom forced him to wait one minute longer in this SUV, sweating like a pig despite the air conditioning being on the highest setting, he would get out and forcibly drag that insolent lamb over to be slaughtered. Or at least beaten within an inch of his life, because if there was one thing that Szura could not tolerate, it was insubordination.

 

After he’d overcome some possible internal debate, Tom approached the vehicle, came around to the front passenger’s side door, and got in.

 

All at once, Szura was hit with the scent of innocence and vitality, which made his mouth automatically begin to water. It nearly caused him to reach over to grab Tom, but that kind of behavior would be inadvisable given his current location, so he forced himself to resist his urges. He wouldn’t be able to actually _touch_ Tom until he’d spirited him away from Varon’s territory. That ranger was so paranoid and possessive that he might return at any time to check up on his boyfriend, which might force Szura to end him prematurely.    

 

“What did you tell Varon?” Szura asked with a good dose of loathing in his voice as he pulled away from the ranger station.

 

“Obviously not the truth,” Tom shot back testily once he’d secured his seatbelt and scanned the interior of the vehicle for any hidden weapons.

 

_Keep it up, Tom…_ If the brunette continued to use that tone of voice with him, Szura would be forced to fall back onto his military training in order to correct that bad attitude.

 

At the sound of rustling plastic, Szura glanced over to find Tom leaning against the side of the door, as far away from him as he could get, biting into what looked like a pile of scrambled eggs and bacon on two slices of toast. “What are you doing?” Aside from the fact that the brunette was dropping bread crumbs all over Szura’s car, he was enjoying a breakfast meant for paupers. And judging by the way that Tom was practically relishing every bite, that hastily slapped together sandwich had to have been made by that imbecile Varon. _Can that ranger get any more cliché?!_ “I can stop for brunch if you’re hungry,” he offered in barely contained disgust.

 

Tom stopped mid-bite to give Szura a look of contempt, which was pretty brave considering that he was facing off against the man who had restrained, sedated, and physically manhandled him on countless occasions. “You said that this would take one hour and that is all I have to spare for your terrorist plots. I’m not interested in eating with you, or being anywhere near you for longer than is necessary.”

 

“ _Terrorist plots?!”_ It was a bloody miracle that Szura didn’t impulsively slam on the brakes and belt Tom across the face for that comment. “Are you trying to insinuate that I’m some lowlife terrorist?!”

 

“Aren’t you?” Tom countered. “Because if you aren’t related to one of the FAA-approved inspection teams that dealt with my flight before takeoff, then that would leave nothing but terrorism as an explanation for the crash. Because it certainly wasn’t the result of negligence or human error. The way that plane was torn apart in midair had to have been caused by an explosion, or some other form of sabotage,” he accused in an emotionally charged voice.

 

Listening to Tom run his mouth off about matters that he knew nothing about greatly upset Szura. So much so that he accelerated through the swampy off-road path through the Glades, clearing fronds out of the way with his front bumper, snapping branches, and chewing through claylike mud with his tires as he grew angrier and angrier. “You remember the midair impact, do you?” Szura questioned with sinister amusement. “Do you also remember what happened to you after you landed in the water?”

 

But Tom seemed not to have heard the question because he was gripping the passenger’s side armrest tightly and flinched when the SUV tore straight through a patch of bushes without stopping. “Could you slow down?”

 

“Let’s get one thing straight, Tom.” Szura activated the child safety lock on the front passenger’s side door and grinned in satisfaction when Tom instinctively grabbed for the door handle, trying to force it open. “You are my prisoner, not my guest. If what I have planned for today takes longer than one hour, then you will endure it _silently_. You’ll leave when I give you permission to. And you’ll eat whatever I allow you to.” Having said that, Szura reached over, snatched the half-eaten sandwich from Tom’s hand, rolled down his window, and tossed it out onto the mucky ground. “I will also only warn you once about that cell phone in your pocket. Remove your hand and leave it alone, or you will regret defying me.”

 

For a second, Tom remained still with his hand in his pocket, his expression frightened and full of regret. But it only took a major swerve in front of a tree for the brunette to put his hands on his lap where Szura could see them.

 

_That’s right, Tom, you should have told Varon the truth. Maybe then he would’ve been able to track me in order to rescue you. Or better yet, he most likely would’ve talked you out of a maneuver so foolish._ And where would have been the fun in that? This was so much better, having Tom panicking at his side like a domesticated animal that knew it was going to be either abandoned out in the middle of nowhere or tortured to death just for the fun of it.      

 

“Where are we going?” Tom asked once Szura had steered the SUV back onto a recognizable dirt road, as well as slowed down to a less dangerous speed.

 

“Here.” Once again, Szura veered off the road, mowing down the local fauna as he drove straight up to the edge of a sawgrass marsh. He braked at the last possible second, the tires of the SUV spewing mud in all directions from the abrupt stop. “Out,” he commanded, opening the driver’s side door and removing the keys from the ignition. Then, having remembered that he’d locked Tom in, he casually leaned back into the vehicle to unlock the front passenger’s side door.

 

“What is out here?” Tom seemed reluctant to exit the vehicle, probably fantasizing about how Szura intended to bludgeon him to death and leave his body out in the middle of nowhere.

 

“Mariel mentioned that you were searching for your wedding ring,” Szura replied calmly. “It, along with whatever you were wearing on the flight, seems to have gone missing. Am I correct?”

 

Very cautiously, Tom stepped out of the vehicle but kept a good distance out of Szura’s reach, just to be safe. “Are you implying that you’ve found my ring? Out here?”

 

“Just beyond those fronds, on the river embankment, is where you will find all your answers.” Szura said no more because what Tom was about to discover would be pretty much self-explanatory. The nature of Tom’s questions would inevitably change once the discovery was made, so Szura preferred to save his energy for that moment. “Go on,” he coaxed impatiently when Tom continued to hesitate. “If I had wanted you dead, I wouldn’t have wasted my valuable resources in prolonging your life back at the hospital.”

 

Still looking like he did not trust Szura at all, Tom ventured forward, pushing past enormous leafy palm fronds, his charcoal hiking shoes sinking into the swampy ground beneath his feet. Szura followed at a healthy distance – far enough away so that he would not disturb Tom’s progress, but close enough that he would be able to grab him at the right moment. His slate blue eyes narrowed on the exact spot that he wanted Tom to head towards, counting the steps until…

 

“AHHH!!”

 

Szura was well prepared to grab and restrain Tom when the brunette lurched backwards from whatever he’d stumbled across in the marsh. “Take a good long look, Tom.” Szura gripped Tom painfully tight by his upper arms and shoved him back to the foot of the tangled monstrosity that lay on the embankment. “You want your ring back? Well, take it back!” He pushed Tom hard enough to send him sprawling alongside the mud and algae covered skeletal formations, and kicked him down when he tried to scramble back to his feet in a mad panic. “Go on then, reclaim what is yours,” he ordered callously. “Perhaps you’d also like the remnants of your former shirt or your soaked leather shoes back as well.” When Tom looked up at him in desperation and terror, wordlessly pleading for mercy, Szura’s tone became even colder. “If you are to rule at my side, Tom, you had better do as I command you to. I obviously chose you because I am physically attracted to you, but I was also swayed by your obedient personality. If you refuse to obey me…”

 

“What kind of perverse game are you playing?!” Tom shouted up at him, pushing away from the partially decomposed corpses at his side in mounting horror. “You think that throwing me on top of some poor people that you’ve murdered will convince me to leave Russell for you? Are you insane?”

 

It was embarrassingly easy to trap Tom on the ground because he was still nowhere near recovered from his injuries. Szura suspected that Tom may have healed a lot better than most suspected, but he was still no match for someone who was ruthless and lacked empathy. All Szura needed to do was press the heel of his military boot in hard against the brunette’s chest injury in order to pin him down. Seeing Tom’s expression pale and become queasy was all the evidence he needed to know that he was using enough force to immobilize his prey. “Open your eyes, Tom. This isn’t the body of some faceless nobody. And this one is not a person at all!” He indicated first the normally formed humanoid skeleton, followed by the impossible-to-identify pile of bones that were latched onto it. “Don’t you recognize the wedding band on this man’s finger? The same wedding band that you were wearing at the time of the crash.”

 

Although Tom resisted the urge to look at first, he was ultimately swayed by the morbid curiosity that Szura had instilled in him. Szura watched and waited until the brunette glanced over at the rotting corpse of equal height and girth. Then those magnificent blue eyes widened in disbelief when he realized that he had not been lied to. “Why have you put my ring on this body? And my shoes?!” Now Tom was staring up at him in accusation, stopping short of calling him a psychopathic madman.  

 

“This is no mere body, Tom.” Szura was beginning to lose his patience with the brunette’s lack of an imagination. Surely Tom couldn’t be so pure of mind as to believe that he – and he alone – had been spared the same disastrous fate as his fellow passengers. “I’m curious to know how you think you survived that plane crash when everyone else on it perished.”

 

“What kind of question is that?!” Tom glared wildly up at Szura and tried to dislodge the boot that was grinding into his injured chest. “It was an act of God – something that you could never understand. An evil man such as yourself--.”

 

“An act of God?!” Szura cut Tom off mid-sentence, bent down to grab the brunette by one arm, and savagely yanked him up off of the ground. “You dare to call my months of meticulous planning and preparation an _act of God_?!”

 

“Let go!” Tom clawed at the hand pulling him off balance across the mud-slicked surface, only to yelp and drop it when a quick backhanded slap across the face caused his head to explode with pain and his vision to temporarily blur.

 

Szura half dragged Tom down the slippery embankment and into the water, tugging him in knee deep before he could regain his senses. As the warm water seeped through their clothing waist-high, sloshing around them in a mess of leaves, fleeing Whirligig beetles, and stirred up mud, Szura wrenched Tom close by a fistful of his hair and gave him the entire, uncensored truth. “The original plan was not to cause your plane to crash,” he said through gritted teeth, his hold on Tom so tight that the pain was causing the brunette’s eyes to fill with tears. “No, the original plan was to get you down at the lake, two months ago. You see, Tom, I’ve had my eye on you for quite some time. While I do find your sensible nature to be open to manipulation, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I’m more attracted to your physical appearance than anything else.” He gave a short laugh void of amusement as he forced Tom backwards and deeper into the marsh, the water now nearly at shoulder height. “Although there have been rumors of my numerous conquests on and off the base, I actually consider myself to be borderline asexual. The sight of a naked human body spread before me doesn’t turn me on so much as the idea of using and taking control of them. You, on the other hand… The moment I saw you I just knew that I had to have you. Just the thought of finding my release inside you is more than sufficient stimulus to seriously arouse me.” He paused to bury his nose in Tom’s hair, inhaling deeply despite the fact that the brunette came very close to shouldering him hard enough to give him a nosebleed.

 

“Get off of me! I’m not interested in hearing about your perverse sexual problems! Or your sick fantasies about me!”

 

“I thought that you wanted to know what happened to you after your plane crash and why. That is why you came with me today, isn’t it?” Szura tried to maintain his composure, but hearing Tom reject him so plainly made him feel incredibly agitated.

 

“What? No!” Tom twisted around so that he could glare at Szura straight in the face in order to set him straight on why he had been foolish enough to tag along with him this morning. “The only reason I’m here is because you threatened to kill Russell. You promised to leave him alone if I cooperated with you on this homicidal outing. As much as the mysterious nature of the crash disturbs me, I’d much rather get my answers from anyone but you.”

 

Again, Szura had to fight the urge to physically adjust Tom’s disrespectful attitude. He preferred to do as little damage as possible to the attractive brunette’s face, and hitting any vital organs might do extensive harm while Tom was still healing, so Szura stayed his fists and continued to talk instead. “Two months ago.” He revisited the story that he’d been about to tell, adjusting his grip a little so that he could crush Tom against his chest, immobilizing both of the brunette’s arms in the process. “You and your family were down at the lake for a picnic. I believe that it was a Saturday, on a bit of a cloudy day. You rented a boat to take your wife and child out onto the water, but you encountered some trouble halfway into your little excursion.”

 

“You caused our boat to capsize?!”

 

“Not me directly, but yes, I had a hand in it. If you had been _taken_ back then, there would have been fewer casualties. Just your wife and child. Had I known that your wife had had a part-time job as a lifeguard back in her high school days, I would have seen to it that she miss that trip. Then that would have left only the elimination of your offspring.” Szura supposed that he should have anticipated Tom’s outrage and shifted a bit to avoid the teeth that sliced into his neck, drawing enough blood to seriously annoy him. However, it excited him to know that Tom could be provoked into acting uncharacteristically. As pure-hearted as the brunette seemed to be, his survival instincts could persuade him to act without thinking, and Szura found that wildness to be wonderfully appealing. “You weren’t very interested in boating or swimming, so it was difficult to get to you after that miscalculation,” he continued, ignoring the blood that trickled down his neck and the frantic splashing of Tom struggling against him. “But then your wife planned that trip to her aunt’s in Oklahoma and I knew I had you. It was a bit of a risk seeing as how the plane would have gained a fair altitude by the time it crossed over the Glades, and I had no way of knowing if you had a latent heart condition which would have killed you before you hit the water, but I had grown tired of waiting. I needed a compatible mate and _they_ understood that. They carefully adjusted the trajectory so that your row would not be hit by the impact, but not much could be done after that to ensure your safety. At least not until one of them got to you.”

 

“What the hell are you talking about?” Tom demanded to know in a helplessly confused and fearful tone. “You denied that you were a terrorist, but you admit to crashing the plane. Why would you do all this just to get to me?”

 

“Because I _needed_ a mate,” Szura spat out in frustration. “Our kind functions much better when our sexual needs are met, and mine are far from satiated after a dull coupling with one of those inferior _humans_.” Making sure that Tom would not be able to slip out of his grasp when he proceeded to the next stage, Szura quickly set to work putting all the puzzling pieces of information into order for his attractive captive. “Judging by the night terrors that exhaust you come morning every day, I’d imagine that you’re perfectly capable of remembering the glowing orange creature that accosted you in the water that night. They only choose perfect specimens to take, free from any defects, and one of them was only too eager to get its clutches on you. They are no nightmare, Tom. They are our creators, aliens much superior to the human race that rain down from the sky with each passing hurricane. They live in the waters, waiting until a suitable human subject ventures close enough, and then they latch on, absorb all the relevant physical information, as well as memories and visual associations, before discarding of the empty shell that that human becomes. What is born afterwards is a combination of human and alien DNA that I have aptly named _hybrid_. No longer prone to illness or easily distracted by a meaningless daily existence, these hybrids are reborn with a higher sense of purpose, striving to make better use of their time on Earth. Hybrids like you and me.”

 

For a few heartbeats, Tom said nothing, no doubt trying to find some hidden meaning in Szura’s words because the literal translation was too insane to accept. “Is that why you were performing all those tests on me?” Tom finally asked, unable to keep the tremor out of his voice. “Because you thought I was an alien?”

 

“Oh, for a while I was justifiably frustrated because all your test results came back negative,” Szura replied casually. “Of course, my maker assured me that you had been changed, but I needed proof. And I got it with your last test results, the ones that arrived after that dimwit Varon had removed you from my care at the hospital. The one unavoidable indicator of being a hybrid are abnormally high amounts of hemoglobin in the blood. Your blood, Tom, as of the last blood sample I took, contained a rich amount of hemoglobin that has no doubt increased since that point.”

 

“Why does it matter how much hemoglobin is in my blood? I still don’t understand.”

 

“That’s not it at all. You’re just too tense at the moment to think straight. Let me calm you down.” With both arms hugging Tom tightly, Szura sank into the water, towing his prey downwards until they were both completely submerged, and then just held on. As expected, Tom flailed like a fish that had just been tossed out of its natural environment, wrongfully fearing that he would drown because he couldn’t breathe underwater. Well, Szura was going to correct that little misconception right away.

 

As the seconds ticked on, Tom’s struggles grew in intensity, surprising Szura so much that he almost lost his grip at one point. But he continued to hold on, keeping Tom trapped underwater as he counted the minutes passing by.

 

The first three minutes were brutal for Tom, there was no questioning that. Szura imagined that the brunette was making peace with his maker and anguishing over the lost life that he would no longer be able to share with that loser Varon.

 

The next minute and a half were spent with Szura enduring the useless attempts Tom made to attack vital parts of his body. Mainly the throat, sternum, and eyes. Szura felt an odd sense of pride while regaining a firm grip on Tom’s right wrist, after having spent a good few seconds avoiding having his eyes gouged out by the brunette’s clawed fingers. This was not a man who was about to accept death so readily.

 

However much time passed after that, Szura couldn’t be certain because at some point he’d lost count of the minutes that he spent gliding around the bottom of the marsh, always keeping Tom under his control, preventing him from surfacing again. Although by the time it reached what felt like the fifteen minute mark, Tom began to lose consciousness so Szura begrudgingly pulled him out of the water. Hybrids could hold their breath underwater for varying lengths of time, some much longer than others, but it took training. They also faired better when they were not recovering from injuries or fighting for their lives. Still, Tom had done a good job of convincing him that he’d chosen a worthy mate to rule at his side. If the plane crash hadn’t killed him, and the repeated testing and tormenting hadn’t broken his spirit, then Tom was indeed everything that Szura had hoped he would be.

 

“One benefit of being a hybrid is our ability to hide underwater for extended periods of time, which would make attacking our enemies from the coast quite easy. You didn’t do bad today, but with the proper motivation you could probably last close to thirty minutes underwater,” Szura praised as he hauled Tom out of the marsh and back onto the embankment where the corpse of Tom’s original body, as well as the meatless framework of the spent orange creature, were waiting. “Now I’m sure that you understand why even if your affections for Varon were legitimate, you would not be able to stay with him. If he were to find out the truth, he would not hesitate to put you under a microscope or report you to the authorities. And trust me, Tom, it will be only a matter of time before he begins to question who and what you truly are. The body that you now possess is a fresh duplicate of the one that is now decomposing at your feet. Every experience from the time before your rebirth exists as nothing more than a flimsy memory in your mind. As you’ve probably already noticed, there is no sensory information to go with those memories because you have never actually experienced anything that you remember. How long do you think it will take Varon to figure out that your awkwardness in the bedroom stems from a reason far more complicated than closeted homosexuality? Only I know what you are, and only I am capable of understanding what it is you require. So I will take you back to my home where we will sort out how you will cut all ties with Varon and where your daughter will be relocated to. The last thing a hybrid needs is baggage in the form of a human child.”

 

When Tom didn’t respond to either the home invitation, or the insult to his daughter, Szura grabbed the brunette by his jaw to force his head up. Although Tom failed to make eye contact with him, Szura could clearly see that the terror that his future mate had been skillfully concealing was now fully revealed since he had lost the energy to keep up his pretentious mask of anger. Having put an end to the brunette’s false bravado greatly pleased Szura, but still fell short of satisfying the need to subjugate him completely. Tom flinched when Szura caressed his bruised cheek, probably fearing that he would be struck again if he dared to move, and his hands were trembling by his sides despite his best attempts to keep them still. There was also the matter of the spreading pink patch of watered down blood that marred the cream colored shirt that was now plastered to Tom’s skin, but Szura considered the damage he had done to the brunette’s unhealed injury a well deserved punishment.

.

“You have no need to fear me so long as you do as you’re told,” Szura said calmly, stroking Tom’s right arm in the same manner as he would often stroke the neck of his steed, after he’d whipped it into submission. “When one hybrid bonds with another, they become inseparable, never needing to fear idiotic things like one mate straying to have an affair, or developing an incurable illness that we are now immune to. At my side, you would be well provided for by a man of power and wealth.” At that moment, the only thing Szura wanted to do was divest Tom of his soggy clothing, drag him down onto the muddy earth next to those soulless corpses, and prove to him that his kisses and caresses could be even more pleasurable than those of that accursed ranger. He was so desperate to possess Tom that he had murdered over one-hundred passengers on a commercial airline, and he was more than willing to add onto that number in order to get what he wanted. In fact, he couldn’t wait to get his hands on that meddler Varon. Forget what he had done to the enemy overseas, he would make that park ranger suffer tenfold for coming between him and his mate.

 

“I feel dizzy… I need to sit down,” Tom pleaded, his voice raspy and his breathing shallow.

 

“If you’re going to be sick, do so a distance from me,” Szura instructed. While having his intended life partner cowering at his feet really stoked his ego and turned him on, he wanted no part in caring for a weeping man with a sensitive stomach. Hybrids were supposed to be built of sturdier stuff, so why was Tom still showing signs of emotional attachment to Varon, as well as appearing seriously unwell? Szura hated to acknowledge that the tears in Tom’s eyes were probably meant for that idiot park ranger. Even after having been enlightened as to his true nature, Tom continued to pine for Varon like some lovesick pup. As if being separated from Varon was causing him some profound pain and suffering. But that couldn’t be possible because Tom hadn’t _been with_ Varon yet, of that Szura was certain, and there weren’t any recorded cases of a human bonding with a hybrid. The two just weren’t compatible.  

 

As soon as Szura had released him, Tom collapsed to his hands and knees and remained on the ground, having taken on an unhealthy pallor. He was also shivering harder now. “Oh, for crying out loud, Tom, just throw up and be done with it.” So long as he did so outside, and not in the car, Szura could pretend to be unaffected by it. “I have some mineral water in the car…” Trying not to let Tom hear the irritation in his voice, Szura retreated back to his vehicle, retrieved the mineral water from the back seat, and stood there for a moment rummaging around in his head for something nice and reassuring to say to his soon-to-be mate. But saying things he didn’t mean always took a great deal of effort. He just didn’t see the point in reinforcing anyone’s weakness by enabling them. How many times had he told Mariel that she looked good in her hospital scrubs when he’d really wanted to advise her to go put on another layer of makeup to compensate for how homely she appeared? And last night when he’d briefly met Mariel’s kid, he had lied and said the boy looked handsome and strong, like his mother. He’d had to hold his tongue when he noticed the resemblance that that slightly flabby brat had to Varon. No amount of maturing would help that boy overcome the misfortune of being born the son of a lowly park ranger.

 

“Come back to the car where it’s warm,” Szura called out to Tom, thinking that his tone sounded amiable enough. “Once you’ve dried off, I’ll take you to--.” His jaw dropped as he came around the other side of the SUV, peered through the drooping fronds that had been pushed back to reveal the corpses on the embankment, and saw not a trace of Tom Underlay. “Tom?” Had the brunette passed out? But a quick visual scan of the area revealed no prone figures and no footprint tracks. Tom wouldn’t have gone back into the water, would he? He couldn’t have. In his condition, he couldn’t have had the strength or the resolve to force himself back in there. “TOM! Cease this childish game of hide and seek and get out here this instant!”

 

Silence answered Szura’s angry words. The only way Tom could have escaped without leaving any prints was if he had dumped his hiking shoes into the marsh and taken off barefoot. And if he was desperate to get back to Russell, he had probably gone back in the direction that they’d come in, although keeping close to the shelter of the trees.

 

“When I get my hands on you…,” he threatened, choosing the most likely route that Tom would have headed off in and charging after him in a barely suppressed rage.

 

For over an hour, Szura combed the forested area leading up to the marsh, looking for any signs of bent branches, displaced leaves, or scuffed up dirt. When he was thoroughly fed up with searching on foot, he returned to his vehicle in order to cover more ground, and just about exploded when he saw what was waiting for him. The rear window on the driver’s side had been smashed open with a rock, which was now sitting on the rear floor of the SUV, along with a lot of shattered glass. The second bottle of water that Szura had taken to drink with Tom was missing, along with his military leather jacket, as well as the tissue box that had been sitting in the backseat, and a pack of peanuts. Tom must’ve gone back into the water, waited for him to go off on a mad search, and then come out again in order to raid his vehicle. There hadn’t been much to steal, and Szura doubted that the items that Tom had managed to get his hands on would do him much good out in the Glades overnight. Considering how large and vast the Glades were, there was a zero percent chance that Tom would be found and rescued before morning. _If_ someone even got to him by then.

 

“Well done, Tom,” Szura called out sarcastically. “By the time this is all over, you’ll be begging me to take you home with me.” He got back into his vehicle, slammed the door and started the engine. “Let’s see what you’re made of then,” he muttered underneath his breath, scrapping the plans that he’d had of taking Tom out for lunch in favor of heading in the direction of Mariel’s house. He had one hell of a lot of stress to offload after the stunt that Tom had just pulled, and unfortunately, that woman was the only outlet that he had available for venting at the moment.

 

 


End file.
